Dodging Bullets

My car's brakes have been noisy for quite a while and I've been in twice in the past few months to get them looked at and fixed. Every time they tell me that they're not ready to be worked on yet despite the horrendous noise they make. Finally, on Tuesday I went in again and they said it's a good thing I came in now becasue there was only about 5% left on one of the brake pads. Lucky for me.

They took the car for the day and Shana and I went to breakfast (she was nearby getting her front headlights replaced because they'd both gone out). Later in the day I went out to pick up the car and they said it'd be $390. Ouch. Then the guy helping me said, "The brakes have a two-year or 25,000 mile warranty..." and I think, didn't I get my brakes done here before? Shouldn't this be covered? So, I run out to my car and pull out the paperwork and sure enough I'd had them done about two years ago. They looked at it, did some bookkeeping and handed me my check back. Woohoo. Dodged that bullet. So I'm $390 richer than I thought I'd be.

Wednesday I went to see Julia's brother, who works at the Verizon store in the mall, so I could maybe get a new phone since mine's more than a couple years old and maybe increase my monthly minutes. Sure enough, I walked out with a great new phone (with a camera) and a plan that should cover the number of minutes I'm typically using now. All for less than $5 after the rebate. How awesome is that? Another bullet dodged.

Also in the last couple of days I've been going through all my gaming books and I've managed to pull out about nine feet-worth of books (okay, it's three 3' stacks) that I just went to sell this afternoon at Half-Price Books. They have quite a business going. I sold roughly $2000 worth of books for $164. That was a little painful. Anyway, if you're in the area, you'll find that the Crossroads store has a lot of obscure games now.

I have a trip to Toronto coming up in a couple weeks. I've never been there before and I'm looking forward to seeing the city. Jim and I are hoping to meet up with Robin (see link at the right) at some point. In addition to all the daily work stuff, I've also been working on my freelance stuff. I haven't had a lot of time to do that because my days are filled with work for the new company and in the evenings I'm at Julia's. In order to help me out I've taken a few more steps toward buying a laptop. Thankfully I have some fairly tech-savvy friends who've helped me out regarding what to get and how much it should cost.

Okay, more later.