I had hoped this would be a calm quiet time of year, but nope. Did get the windshield on the car replaced after lots of hassle. A little pebble on the road should not set in motion a month long process, a 3 hour procedure (to 'calibrate' after install), and an $1100 repair half-borne by insurance.

Sick of the newish car and its annoyances. Constant dinging if I so much as open a door, locking the back hatch unless the motor is turned off (real handy when dropping trash at the dumpster), insane center-in-the-lane guidance when I need to hug the outer line (no it can't be turned off if cruise is on), and a dozen other aggravations. I added a CD player but it's so clumsy to operate I don't use it much.

Noticed a better older vehicle model is now trending much less than last year, so set out to plan a trade-in. Looking up my current payoff, discover I got swindled into a ridiculous partial warranty 'just $50 a month' which in reality jacked up the cost to finance by over $5K, so now my payoff is more than the initial price of the car.   There is a way out of that but it will take time and a registered letter to cancel the 'plan'.

Yes I did tell them in no uncertain terms I wanted no add-ons and warranties. They kept me waiting for hours (after I had driven 3 hours to get to them, and already turned over a check), chatted me up, made me wait some more, wore me down, lied to me. I'm so tired of every vendor out there trying to cheat me. This time I'm taking a retired car dealer with me to make the deal, though he can get so belligerent I may have a stroke during the process.

Perhaps the delay is just as well, because in the last year, all 3 of the credit bureaus have bungled up different parts of my record, plus now I have this ludicrous house-renumbering to go through with them. Spent hours trying to get the free reports, finally got 2 but the last I had to spend 30 minutes yelling at a machine, and the machine decided it will mail me a report, to Lord only knows what past address.

So yeah. Summer has become about cleaning vehicles, clearing jungly weeds where it was once desert, and online hassles for hours, about things that used to take a 2 minute visit to a website or a 5 minute phone call.

Going to tidy up the car and the house, and go to a little concert tonight with a friend, and forget about all this stuff for a while.