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August 20, 2000 |
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Pam and I planned to drop off more things at her new
place today. Mostly dishes. She keeps packing the dishes in paper bags,
not the paper bags from the grocery store, but more like the ones from
stores like Ann Taylor and Eddie Bauer, which is a detestable store. I
find this very curious and a bit alarming, I don't carry dishes very often,
but when I do they're certainly not in paper bags. Maybe that's just me
though since, I carry computer equipment all the time, and I'm not all that
careful about it. I know that most computer equipment is pretty sturdy.
As for lunch, we went to Dead Robin. There were two locally where
we could go to, but one was closer to her new place. It doesn't have patio
seating, but it is a little too cold today anyway. As we were being seated,
I asked the host for a red balloon. Pam looked at
me quizzically. Our waiter though competent and attentive, looked a little
too grunge with his goatee to fit into the typical Red Robin
Turn-it-down-a-notch happy-go-lucky attitude. She got the Bleu
Ribbon burger, because… she always does here. I got the California
chicken burger. For a while, I though that our host had forgotten about
the balloon, but, to his credit, he did remember.
During lunch we talked about the remainder of the things we had to do for
the day.
Next, we went to get a mattress. There was a Sleep Train mattress store, which was only a few blocks from her new place. Not that this mattered since they delivered for free. I suppose I'm too much of a cynic and wonder how much more the mattress is since they're giving you free delivery. I didn't sneer too much however.
As we were walking into the store, Pam told me, "Don't let me spend more than X dollars." To be honest, that figure even seemed high to me. [Ha!]
Just as a reference, this mattress is for the guest bedroom. Although her parents were coming the following week to help her pack. Though truthfully, I'm not sure how effective that's going to be since they're arriving the day before she moves. They can help her unpack I suppose, but even then two weeks to help unpack? Hey, it's their relationship.
Pam ended up getting a mattress, an exceptional mattress, even I must admit, though she ended up overshooting her price by a few hundred dollars. It's her mattress.
We then went to the local Toyota dealer, since she still wanted to lease a car. I have to cars (and a motorcycle) I can certainly loan her one of the two cars. It would have to be the Camaro since my DelSol is a manual transmission. It would've been a good setup on both parts since that car really needs to be run more frequently. I feel that it is getting a bit neglected. It runs fine. I've loaned it to folks on occasion. I've loaned it to Len, Jim's friend, and another friend of mine who lived in Olympia. Although she got into a car accident with it; the car still runs fine, although it has a dent on the side.
Pam wasn't particularly fond of the idea. I'm not sure if it had to do with the fact that it is a 60's sports car, or that I had loaned it to another woman. I have the feeling it was a little of both.
We went to test drive a Rav4, which is the same kind of car she had before. Keep this in mind, I've known her now for about eight months, this is the second time I've seen her drive. Jim the salesperson, instructed us which way to drive, naturally, he pointed towards the highway, since people normally want to know how it handles in highway speeds, but Pam wouldn't have any of it. I ended up doing the highway portions of the test drive.
We went in to talk numbers and we weren't able to get a deal with the numbers that she wanted. So we walked out. One of Jim's final comments was, "We can't pay you to drive our car."
We stopped by her new place to drop off some more of her dishes. Then there were the little game we play with the pigs. A few months ago, I got her a couple of small piggy banks, each with our names on them. She layed them out in the kitchen. I keep putting them in comprimising positions to which she says, "Stop that! They're not makin' bacon."
During this trip she had brought her measurements for her furniture. After some quick calculations and more measurements with the tape measure she realized that some of her furniture wasn't going to fit the way she wanted. I thought to myself, so we would have to configure it some other way, the place really is quite roomy and there should not be any problem finding space for everything. I suppose there really was no use in arguing the point, because she really wanted her furniture precisely that way, and she was getting a bit frustrated.
In fact, I was thinking to myself that she's getting into one of those moods… and she was. Yes, I understand that she has a lot on her mind, but I suppose that I approach problems differently. I suppose that I tend to look at immediate problems and propose solutions; I suppose it is the engineer in me afterall. I typically don't have time to dwell on mistakes that I've made. Not to say that I don't make mistakes, but I simply chalk it as learning experiences and move on.
Pam has this particular self-destructive habit. Whenever she comes to a junction where something is going wrong, as the entire wall space situation today, she'll go back and re-evaluate every single decision that has led her to this one. And indeed the question start up again… "Why did I pick an apartment sight-unseen?" "Why did I decide to move to this side of town?" "Why did I leave my old job and move to Seattle?"
I really hate it when she gets like this, because she takes out many of her frustrations on me. I keep telling myself that the next time she gets into one of these moods, I was going to leave her alone while she deals with it herself. I do care about her and want to help her out, but don't think is fair for me to be her emotional dumping ground.
In an effort to calm her down and to be supportive, I asked her if she wanted to see if she could move to a different unit. You know, there's a old adage among programmers:
"Never check for an error condition you're not prepared to handle."She had started moving in; she had already signed the lease; she had spent weeks agonizing over precisely which unit to move into. Naturally, I didn't think that she would really consider going to the apartment office to try to move to a different unit. I was wrong. There was part of me that really believed that all she really wanted is the perogative to change her mind, and once she found that she could, she probably wouldn't. Still, I found that I felt a bit strange going to the apartment office with her while she made the request.
We spoke to yet another person in the apartment office, and after looking at another unit, we asked if it would be okay. She told us it was probably fine, but she would have to check with her manager. She would have to get back to us.
After this we went to yet another car dealership, this one was a Honda dealership. I like Hondas; I'm very fond of my DelSol. Pam was getting a bit frustrated about the car lease situation, so we went looking for another SUV. We weren't going to discuss the whole "borrow my car" scenario again. We test drove an a CRV, which she didn't seem to like as much as the Rav4. I did manage to talk her into driving a Civic, which would be considerably less to lease than an SUV.
There did have a red Honda S2000 roadster in the showroom. I really like this car; I would seriously consider getting this car even if I had to pay full retail for it. In fact, it is part of my wish list. It has 240 horserpower; it is perfectly balanced front and rear; it is a two seater convertible. I was nearly salivating. It is an incredibly sexy car. If they only weren't asking ten thousand dollars over the suggested retail price, I might have had one already. If I paid that much more for it, I don't know if I could drive the car without feeling like a sucker. Besides, part of the appeal of the car was that it is (at the suggested retail), an incredible car for the price; this is certainly not true for the additional $10k.
Needless to say, Pam didn't get a car today. And neither did I, besides a convertible would be far too impractical to have in Seattle. Now, if I were to move to Florida…
At this point, we were pretty hungry, we went to I Love Sushi for dinner. On the way there, she reconsidered the deal for the Rav4 yesterday, and decided it wasn't such a bad deal afterall, she gave those guys a call. She seemed to feel much better after this.
Dinner was good. If there's anything about these guys is that they're consistent. We ordered the regular sushi and nigiri that we normally order. She also ordered a green salad. There are a few things that always come to mind when we dine at I Love Sushi they are:
- If they can serve rum (as they list on their flyer on their table) and they serve Coke, why can't they make a Rum and Coke?
- Why the uniforms on sushi chefs so incredibly clean. I suppose I see a clean uniform on a chef is like a clean uniform on a mechanic… an aberration.
- Isn't there supposed to be scallop in a Rosanna roll?
August 20, 2000