I spent ~3 hours this evening at my daughter's almost ex-house, helping with some of the nitty gritty cleaning before they are completely moved out. Two of the four bathrooms in the house are now in shiny clean shape, and I tackled some of the grime in the kitchen (the area where the fridge stood took several passes with various cleaners, and the stove and microwave had built up splatters that are gone). They've been in the house for almost seven years, so the landlord should be painting and putting in new toilet seats and replacing or refreshing the carpets.

I brought back a small desk that I'll put on the Buy Nothing page for my part of town; one less thing they need to move. Their Ikea bookshelves were too large for any to slide into the SUV.

There is an account of my trip to the Nissan dealer on my Facebook page; I went in for an oil change and tire rotation and they were making a concerted effort to convince me to sell my used vehicle to them. After the planned on work and the free inspection stuff I got a text with the quote on various things that need doing (thousands of dollars) - this is based upon mileage and not based on actual problems. As I was scrolling through that list and declining all of the expensive stuff, the phone rang and it was the sales department at Nissan offering a lowball price for my SUV (because they now know it's in good shape) and I should buy a new vehicle. Except out of curiosity I ran a query through Edmunds Car Guide a few weeks ago and a local Auto Nation dealer offered $8000 more. I wouldn't use it as a trade-in for their terrible offer.

I told this sales woman that I thought their approach stunk and take me off the list for soliciting purchasing my vehicle. But round two was paying the bill for the oil change - when the Service department representative started to go through a litany of things I need to do regarding the current status (based upon what I had already declined). So many places do this - you can't just pay and go, you have to fight off the sales folks. After the first couple of visual aids (the tools to measure brake health and tire tread depth) I told her to let me pay and give me the printout and stop the sales pitch. My statement to end the BS: "I have to pee and I have somewhere else to be." I'm really tired of businesses that think they see you coming, and you'll roll over and let them have their way. I'm looking for a mechanic to do some of this work as needed, not the dealer.