(no subject)

I got panicky last night about the possible new car when I realized that I was going to have to get comprehensive and collision insurance on it as a condition of financing. I've never had that coverage on anything and it just hadn't occurred to me until I called Carmax and went over terms again to make sure I had everything.

I called my current insurer, Progressive, to get a quote with the new vehicle, but all they could give me was the increase prorated for the last two months of my current policy. They said that they would be unable to give me a quote for the rate on my renewal until May since they weren't calculating rates for that time yet.

Now I'm right back to that financial uncertainty again. It's all adding up to rather more money than I was expecting and I'm once again thinking about just buying something older and cheaper for cash and being done with it all. It's just frustrating to think of all that money going to car payments and insurance instead of into my savings account. Gah.

My dad and I looked at one of those insurance comparison websites and I'm going to try calling a couple other companies and see if I can get quotes based on Andrea and my info, and the two cars we'd have. If my current company can't give me the info I want, maybe another one can. The online quotes were rather less than I'm paying now, too, so maybe I can get something better, which would make me fell a little better about the Aveo. Strangely, one of the two quotes that were significantly lower than my current rate was from Progressive, the company I'm already with. Perhaps I didn't have all my information plugged in right. We'll see I suppose. Waiting longer and looking for a used Metro or Civic is looking more attractive.

Either way, I have to decide today or tomorrow. The Aveo is being driven to the Kenosha lot and will arrive either today or tomorrow, at which point I have to go test drive it and decide what I'm doing.

(no subject)

A general apology; this week has been pretty stressful and I haven't had much time to do much of anything. I'm sorry. I will get computer information to those I owe it to as soon as I've managed to get this stuff with the car and whatnot straightened out. I'm probably going to have to go out to Carmax a couple more times to finish things up this week so I don't know how much time I'll have. I'm sorry.

I think that, having checked quotes from a couple more insurers, things are looking better. My quotes from other agencies were, in fact, so much lower than the one I got from Progressives's site, that it makes me think I entered something incorrectly, but I'm nearly sure I didn't. What I'm probably going to do is, if I can confirm and lock down a newer, lower quote from another agency, is finish out my current term with Progressive, and then start up a new term from Unitrin or Geico or somebody that I'm going to lock in early with a payment soon and be all set in May when my plan switches over.

But if I can drop my insurance rates as much as I think I can, I'll feel a lot better about buying the Aveo.

Thank you all for your support as I whine incessantly about stuff you probably don't care that much about.

(no subject)

A team of researchers from the University of Calgary and the Tokyo Institute of Technology proudly announced in February that they had successfully stored "nothing" inside a puff of gas and then had managed to retrieve that same "nothing." That "nothing" is called a "squeezed vacuum," and the physicists tell us that a light wave can be manipulated so that its phases are of uncertain amplitude, then the light itself removed so that only the "uncertainty" property of the wave remains. [ScienceNOW Daily News, 2-29-08]

Does this mean that I can finally have 'tea' and 'no tea' at the same time?

That's probably painfully, painfully obscure.