Month: March 2020

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So This Happened

"Name's Rabbit. White Rabbit."

When I woke up yesterday it was not my intention to go out and guarantee that I wouldn't be retiring for the next six years, but that's exactly what happened.

Originally the plan had been to take a drive out to Tolleson and pay a visit to CarMax to arrange that a MINI Countryman I'd been eyeing be shipped down from Henderson, Nevada, so I could take a test drive and hopefully like the car enough to buy it.

Instead, I went online and started searching other dealers' inventories in Phoenix just to see what was available. A lot of them had vehicles similar to what I was looking for, but unfortunately they all had automatic transmissions and I really wanted to stay with a stick. (The car in Henderson was a six-speed stick). Call me old fashioned, but with the exception of my New Beetle back in the late 90s, every car I've owned has had a manual transmission.

After reading the Yelp reviews of the Carmax dealership, it spooked me. The reviews either seemed to be only one-star or five-star, with the one-star far outnumbering the five. It was time to rethink my priorities.

I decided to take one of these local automatic Countrymen for a test drive, and after grabbing lunch with Ben, we headed to the north valley AutoNation. Surprisingly, I didn't hate it. In fact, I pretty much loved every aspect of the car. The no-haggle price and projected monthly payments were in line with everywhere else I'd looked online, so four hours later (I'll be blogging about that too), and committing myself to not retiring for another six years, I bid a bittersweet farewell to Anderson, my faithful companion for the last fourteen (!!!) years, and we drove off.



When the new car bug hit me a few months ago, after seeing a lime green Jeep Renegade I was intrigued. But could I see myself in a different brand after a decade and a half as a MINI owner? Not a chance. I knew in my heart that if I'd gotten anything other than another MINI, every time I saw one on the road I'd sigh and wish that things were different. Also keeping in mind that barring winning the Lotto and being set financially for life, the next car I bought would probably realistically be my last if I ever hoped to retire, and I really wanted to be sure it was something I wanted.

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Gawd I Needed This…And I Didn't Even Know It

I consider myself neither a Streisand queen nor a Broadway queen, but goddamn, I put this on today—after not hearing it for 20 years or more—and it was like diving into a cool, clear, stream.

I won't say that I have specific memories attached to this album, but rather more of a feeling; a Joie de vivre from the 80s.

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It's a Beautiful Thing







Nazi Monuments Being Destroyed At the End of World War II.

And a note to confederates: these monuments weren't kept as "history." These monuments celebrated horrible things and we BLEW THEM UP.

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"It Just Works"

Another Apple rant. Quelle surprise.

I ran across a post today that was pointing out it's been 22 years since Madonna released Ray of Light (something I noted here last month.) and this made me realize I hadn't heard the album in quite some time, so I went to fire it up in iTunes. It wasn't there.

This was odd because I know I'd purchased the album years ago and if I wasn't mistaken I'd even transferred it to my phone about six months ago. I checked my phone, and it was conspicuously absent as well. I looked up my purchases so I could download it again, thinking that perhaps I'd inadvertently deleted it from iTunes.

Sure enough, it was showing "purchased," but there was no option to download it again. After about a half hour of sleuthing, I discovered that it—and in fact MY EVERY PURCHASE I EVER MADE THROUGH ITUNES—was now located in "hidden" purchases!

It didn't seem that I was missing music from the library, and several of the "hidden" purchases played just fine, but nevertheless I started manually unhiding all the purchases, ONE BY ONE—because Apple—of course there was no option to unhide everything all at once. (Actually there was a button to "unhide all," but once again—because Apple—clicking on it didn't do a damned thing.) I gave up after restoring the two missing Madonna albums that were actually gone from my library and about a couple dozen other items, because I realized this is not how I intended to spend the rest of my afternoon.

After the two missing Madonna albums were visible again, I was able to download them.

What's weird is that it looked like the rest of my purchased music was still in my library…

IT JUST WORKS. IT JUST WORKS. IT JUST WORKS, GODDAMNIT. YOU'RE JUST USING IT WRONG!