Deal breaker.

So today we went car shopping. My car decided it wanted to be a completely forward-thinking machine and stopped going in reverse. Rather than pay at least $300 to fix it, we decided to see what was out there in affordable used cars.

I scanned the website of the local dealership that caters to poor people with bad credit and found that $4000 cars could be had for a monthly payment of $50 for 60 months (yes, there are better deals, but money is the deciding factor once we find something that won't fall apart in three months).

We started out to their lot today, then Hubby decided to pull into the local used car lot of the biggest dealer in the state. We looked around a bit, and I saw that none of their cars have prices on them. We tell the salesman the amount we're looking at and what payment we'd like. He points us to a couple of cars. One car he fixates on is a very nice 7-year-old Saturn, manual transmission, nothing obviously wrong with it. However, it's been so long since I've driven a manual that I can't take it for a test drive. Hubby had just had another hip procedure, so he couldn't do.

We look at an Oldsmobile of teh same vintage, obviously has been well-used, I drive it around the block, it feels pretty good. Hubby was looking at some other cars while I was driving.

We go inside to start crunching numbers. After filling out some forms, he comes back and tells us that the first car we looked at is priced at $10,000 with a monthly payment of $250. We tell him that's way outside the price range we asked for. He shows us the wonderful Carfax report. We repeat that the price is way out of line. He goes away for a bit and comes back with the price $2000 lower, but the monthly payment is still $200.

We're three hours into this by now, and I'm getting peeved that he's not hearing us saying what we're saying--and to give him good marks, he didn't try to "little lady" me or anything like that. He just keeps trying to nudge us up on the payment, points out that banks won't give us a better rate on that car, that no one will finance a $4000 car, etc. I tell him what I found at the other dealership, and he got a very sour look on his face. He tried to talk them down, and I told him that we still weren't going to be paying what he was quoting.

Kudos to my beloved Hubby, he just said "She's in charge of the finances, I turned it all over to her when my heart went weird and I couldn't deal with the stress anymore. If she says we can't do it, we can't do it."

And the salesman still kept trying to get us to agree to a payment higher than what we told him! I got up and walked away from the desk at that point, leaving Hubby to do his soothe the waters thing. I didn't care at that point. I know the salesman was doing his job, which has to be a thankless one. If he hadn't fixated on the Saturn--he never did run the numbers on the Olds I actually drove--or took us at our word on what we wanted to pay, it would have been much nicer.

However, I never felt impatient with Hubby, and I'm very pleased with our united front. And apparently our credit is sufficient for a loan for a $10,000 car, at least.

I would go with an m-dash or colon. But I find the longer I teach, the less I correct individual grammar errors in student papers. There's usually bigger fish to fry.

SO TRUE. I don't correct much grammar. I'm too busy trying to fix the weak, shoddy thinking.

Yesterday my colleagues and I double scored 1000 essays. We had all assigned the same prompt to all of the students at my school. So we scored them together. It was exhausting but thought provoking. Also, good to give a score with no comments.

Today's xkcd is potentially heart breaking.

[link]

SO TRUE. I don't correct much grammar. I'm too busy trying to fix the weak, shoddy thinking.

Well, when you're teaching grammar and punctuation, those are the fish in question.

Google maps is making me fucking insane. I need to walk away for tonight, I've been messing with it for 90 minutes and can't get it to behave consistently. WALKING AWAY.,

I could tag and label more photos but if I have to type Chillagoe one more time tonight.... Here's what I've got, I quit even describing the sets around Palmer River. [link]

Okay, that blue silk top (satin??) that Kerry Washington is wearing in the opening scene of yesterday's Scandal? Such an amazing colour. I don't have anything that amazing. I want that.

His brother is a good looking kid [link] too, but this one [link] this one is going to break some hearts. If he doesn't headbutt them first: [link]

Ha. I just did an image search to illustrate a point I was making about babies being tainted once they have known hunger, and the white chocolate baby heads were on the second row of results.

Wooha! The contingency plan can go back in the drawer for another month. We made it past cutoff with no alarm bells ringing, so that's good. And this does not mean we shouldn't have resolved what I demanded resolution on--just communicating that to the business is an act with benefits.

I did get an email where people were playing hot potato with an URL that wasn't returning the content they expected. It's pleasant when I can take said potato and hand it carefully to the person who batted it over the net and explain why it's nothing to do with me, and in fact is all on them. Sure helps the weekend start off well.

The dress Olivia is wearing at the end of the episode is also gorgeous. Wow. She is getting the fuck styled out of her, because they light grey jacket with the long peplum--crave. At least she dresses more appropriately than Jessica on Suits, but still amazing.

There was something about that dress I didn't care for, but the jacket, yes, awesome.