I finally got my driver’s license today. Ten years behind the curve, but who’s counting?
The test went well, all things considered. My stress levels weren’t helped by the fact that the car sent by the driving school didn’t have up to date proof of insurance. The drive tester was definitely not happy about that. After faxes were made and things were sorted out (including some confusion as to whether I needed a Vietnamese translator or not), we were off and running around the familiar roundabouts of Greenwood. I scored 90 - she docked two for being too far from the curb during parallel parking and four for hitting the curb while backing around a corner (which, incidentally, seems to be a bit of sadism peculiar to Washington State drive tests as far as I know). What I felt was really unfair was taking off four for attempting to move from a parked position while still in parking gear. I mean, in the end I wasn’t moving, so how unsafe could that have been?
So I have a license, and I even have a car. Jamie gave me his old one, a 1990 Acura Integra GS.
It’s a little beat up in the front due to an incident between Jamie and a van, hence the greatly recessed lights, but it seems to run just fine. Note the fuzzy dice, a fitting and much appreciated gift from Susan. I now need to get proper insurance, take the car to get the oil changed, pass a smog test, and get the title transferred, all within two weeks (the title transfer clock started ticking last Friday when the car was passed to me). Over the course of last week I’ve already slowly worked out the backward dependencies: i.e. that title transfer depends on passing a smog test, and the smog test requires driving the car, which requires insurance, which requires having a valid license, and if any forward dependencies exist in these steps then I will be screwed.
I’ve also discovered that State Farm Insurance isn’t the same thing as Farmer’s, and the insurance agents get huffy when you mix the two up.
Of course, having a car just makes it easier to go to home improvement stores. Mimi visited for the last couple of weeks, and relatives are of course most useful for manual labour, so we made the trek out to the Home Depot four times (twice while I was driving - and yes, there was some unclear insurance status during those trips, so it may not have been such a good idea). In between weeding, bookshelf assembling, spackling of lawn, piano polishing, and general cleaning, we managed to paint the guest bedroom/office “hilltop green”:
It turned out a lot darker than I expected. Here’s where the graphics geek in me emerges, because according to the paint manufacturer hilltop is supposed to be #4a5d52, which according to your browser is this color: , and as I sit here staring at the wall and my (badly calibrated) monitor I realise they doesn’t match at all, and neither matches the printed color sample either. I’m not sure what lesson there is to be learned here, other than it would be great if someone came up with light emissive paint in monitor color gamut space? Anyways. I like the result, and in any event it’s a vast improvement on canary yellow with teddybear trim.