{"id":49,"date":"2006-06-02T07:14:56","date_gmt":"2006-06-02T14:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2006\/06\/02\/car-driving-and-blinky\/"},"modified":"2006-06-02T07:14:56","modified_gmt":"2006-06-02T14:14:56","slug":"car-driving-and-blinky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/2006\/06\/02\/car-driving-and-blinky\/","title":{"rendered":"Car, driving, and Blinky"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m procratinating from reading about HPLC or going UNC&#8217;s online safety course. So, I figured I&#8217;d say a little bit about the car. Like greg said, it&#8217;s not flashy, but it&#8217;s mine. I&#8217;ve named it &#8220;Rusty&#8221; since he is. I know cars are supposed to be female, but this one&#8217;s not pretty, so Rusty it is.<\/p>\n<p>After yesterday&#8217;s repairs, including general fluid flushes, hooking up a disconnected wire to the AC (yea! cold air!), and replacing the brake master cylinder (yes! brakes that work well!), I&#8217;m out another $1000. But that&#8217;s okay, because now Rusty should in theory go for a while now (knock on wood). Today he&#8217;s back in for the state safety inspection and an alignment check. Only $90 today!<\/p>\n<p>I drove home, got gas (first time in MY car and nobody to take a picture!), and then went home to retrieve Blinky. If you&#8217;ve read Greg&#8217;s prior posts you&#8217;ll remember that Blinky is ou new auto GPS system. I needed Blinky to guide me to Finley Forest apartments (I already kind of knew where I was going, but figured I wanted Blinky&#8217;s company), where I purchased 2 small dresser drawers from a guy who graduated with an MBA from UNC. Also got a nice wood end table thrown in! I managed to get everything in the car, and then Blinky and I drove home.<\/p>\n<p>Some of you reading are wondering why this is such a big deal. Well, for those of you who don&#8217;t know about me and cars, here&#8217;s the deal. I don&#8217;t drive. I can drive, since I was 16, but I haven&#8217;t driven a lot since I got my license. Insurance in LA, where I grew up was $4000 a year, and my mom said no. I drove a lot on my learner&#8217;s permit, but then had to stop due to lack on insurnace. In Seattle I drove a bit, but the streets were really narrow, and people didn&#8217;t know how to drive at all! LA drivers are insane, but, like drivers in Montreal, they know what they&#8217;re doing. I never felt scared in LA. I did in Seattle. So, the fear developed. Then in Vancouver, I drove more because I had to be up at school really late at night and really early in the morning. Not so scary as in Seattle, but I had become accustomed to not driving. So here, I figured the best way to break out of the non-driving rut was to just drive! So, going to Finely Forest (which is only 10 minutes away) was the first step. Plus, as positive reinforcement, I got to buy something!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve e-mailed someone &#8220;in Chapel Hill&#8221; who posted a nice wood coffee table on the local craigslist for only $10. We&#8217;ll see if Blinky and I get to drive somewhere new today!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m procratinating from reading about HPLC or going UNC&#8217;s online safety course. So, I figured I&#8217;d say a little bit about the car. Like greg said, it&#8217;s not flashy, but it&#8217;s mine. I&#8217;ve named it &#8220;Rusty&#8221; since he is. I know cars are supposed to be female, but this one&#8217;s not pretty, so Rusty it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gregbaker.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}