|
This represents less than an hour of knitting with the heavyweight sock yarn. Doesn’t it look like cheating? It’s so gratifying!
Please to be overlooking the strange color rendering. This picture was taken at dusk, while my clothes were inside the laundromat tumbling merrily away. That’s right: this Friday night, I did laundry! Now I am blogging! Later I will perhaps have time to watch an episode of the new Dr. Who before going to bed at a sensible hour!
Do I know how to fire it up on a Friday night, or what? Woo doggies!
There will be no shop update tomorrow morning. Instead, I am embarking upon another banzai attack on Portland. I’ll be taking the train down (6 hours) and driving my Honda back (5 hours). I will update the shop on Sunday morning.
“Define Sunday morning” would be a relevant question at this point. Ideally I’d love to sleep in until 10AM, mosey about in a leisurely fashion, then update the store around noon.
Alas, I have many things to do on Sunday, and I will have to bestir myself a little bit earlier than that. How early? 7AM? Will I be able to make myself get up at 7AM on a Sunday after a Saturday when I had to get up at 6:30AM and then spent the entire day going down to Portland and back?
Place your bets, people, place your bets!
On an entirely unrelated note, today provided me with a sterling example of why it pays to be nice. I had to get the Saab re-titled (in my name, and for this state) and plated. They didn’t really have instructions for out-of-state title transfers on the website, so I grabbed all of my various bits of paperwork and walked down the street to the licensing office.
There was no wait - I walked right up to the clerk. (Can you believe it?!) I was very kind and friendly, as I always am with service people, having often been one myself in the past. I said I wasn’t sure what to do first, so could she help me figure out what to do next?
She was super sweet, and when we got to the part where I had to pay sales tax on the car because it came from a non-sales tax state (!!) I asked if there was any way around that, and she said “Afraid not,” and I said “Aw.” Then she asked “Now what would you say it’s worth? Because I pretty much just go by what you tell me.” I said “Oh… $500? I mean, it needs some expensive repairs, and it IS 21 years old.”
She smiled and punched in the number. The computer replied, “NO, THAT CAR IS WORTH $3500. SALES TAX IS $350.”
She was like, “?!” I was like, “!!” After our brief exchange of invisible punctuation marks, she said “You know… I think we have another value book I can use, since the car is more than fifteen years old. Hang on a second.”
She rummaged around on a bookcase and found a backup car valuation book, looked up the Saab in its tables, found that in condition “GOOD” (the middle range) it would be worth $1300. Then she said “And considering what you said about the repairs, I think $500 sounds about right.”
Then she rummaged around in her drawer and picked out a license plate with a cool number, saying, “Oh, here’s a good one!”
I was profusely grateful. Then it turned out that I hadn’t brought a check (who pays with checks?) so I had to run across the street to the ATM to get cash.
When I returned, she was busy with another customer. He had purchased a car out-of-state, and had to retitle it because its tabs ran out on Sunday. But he was being a dick about it. The car was in Seattle! He couldn’t get the paperwork in time! Why did he have to pay sales tax? He was sure he had paid sales tax when he bought it! How was he supposed to prove he had paid sales tax? He didn’t keep that paperwork, for crying out loud! And my favorite, “How are we going to resolve this.”
And she just told him, “The system says the value of the car is $2500, and you have to pay sales tax on that amount in order to get a new title and plates.”
I bit my lip to keep from snickering.
See? Being nice matters! About $200 worth, in fact!
Comments (7)
|
