Entries from January 1, 2007 - February 1, 2007
1/22: After-Work Paddle
isalos fine art
1 Comment
1/17: We Prefer To Call it "Hot Tub Effect"
1/16: Roadwork Next 7.5 Miles
Rebecca Daugherty, Roadwork: Next 7.5 Miles
oil on panel, 10" x 10"
This is one of Rebecca's new Roadwork paintings. She's been getting ready for a show next month at West Virginia Wesleyan College's Sleeth Gallery. The Nature of Things, featuring work by a trio of Isalos artists, Barbara Southworth, Vaino Kola and Rebecca Daugherty will open February 13 and hang until March 13.
Our unseasonably warm weather continued until last weekend, when the snow started falling. Naturally, it seemed like a good idea to get out in the kayaks.
"Sure," I said, when we were putting the boats away. "It might be nice to spend some time someplace warmer, but I'd miss this winter kayaking."
1/3: Shopping for Cars
So we visited a few car dealers. We’d spent a fair amount of time on-line researching a few cars, and were nearly convinced that these cars would solve most our automotive needs and improve our life. We like the hatchback wagons that combine half-decent cargo area with gas mileage in the thirties. There’s room for paintings in the back and a kayak rack on top. They ought to be more fun to drive than my cargo van. We’d read Consumer’s Reports and didn’t need to be sold on the fact that X and Y are good car builders with a solid reputation when it comes to low maintenance and longevity. But we had to see the cars first-hand. We wanted to sit in them and measure the cargo space and eventually even drive them.
Our experience at the car dealership begins when we pull into the lot. We’re driving an older car, which makes us feel somehow inadequate around all these new cars. Where do we park? Looks like there’s only one place: right in front where the sign says “customer parking”. Guess we’re already getting used to the idea of being customers. We step out of the car. There’s a few guys in jackets and ties chatting near the front door. Immediately one breaks away and asks us if he can help us find something. We tell him exactly what we’re looking for.
At this point, one of several things might happen: 1) he shows us what we want, 2) we find ourselves in the salesroom at a small table surrounded by other salesmen and other couples at small tables, with the salesman attempting to do something on a legal pad, or 3) he takes us to a used car that “just came in” and costs more than the brand new models we want to see.
Car salesmen can’t bear to see someone walk out the door. After we’ve seen what we’ve come to see, and we’re ready to leave. The salesmen act dumbfounded that we’re not ready to make up our minds then and there. They give us lines like ‘what do I have to do to get you to drive home today in your new car?” They’ll say “I’m trying to understand, did you just come in for the brochures?” They’ll ask “if I could get you that ($23,000) car today for nineteen-five, would you take it?”
The more we looked, the less we knew what we wanted. On our way home at night, the van started making enough noise that we stopped in Portland and stayed at a motel. We spent the morning and the equivalent of a car payment to get it fixed, then spent the afternoon looking at cars. We drove a couple and were assured that we’d get the best prices because it’s the end of the year. But the cars still somehow didn’t feel like the answer to everything. I thanked the salesman for his patience and we drove home. Eventually, the “check engine” light stopped flashing and our desperate need for a new car seemed to wane the closer we came to our driveway.
We often go for several days, even a week without driving anywhere. However, we like the idea of being able to easily drive anywhere in a comfortable, safe car... perhaps even with an iPod jack and under-the-dash LED lighting accents. I have little doubt that just about any of those cars we looked at would serve us just fine, but do we really want to pay for it? Do we want to be in debt for that car, and pay thousands of dollars interest for the privledge of being in debt? It seems that having debts takes away the immediate reality of the money being spent. You already owe X every month. What difference does it make it you add a bit more to that debt? Suddenly you’re saying “gee, there’s this other life I’d rather be living, but I’ve got bills to pay, so instead I’ll work at a job I only like marginally and live in a place that.... hey, everyone else lives like this, what’s wrong with it?”
Not to be judgemental; I’m sure lots of people really like those jobs and those places and their cars, and they don’t mind being in debt, and hey, they deserve all that stuff that makes their lives better. I tried it and it didn’t work for me, but hey- that’s just me. My guess is that we’ll get a car loan and take the plunge and we’ll like the car and the way it improves our lifestyle. And maybe, with a better car, Rebecca will go more places and paint more paintings. Maybe, when our driveway looks better with that better car in it, gallery visitors will be so filled with confidence that they’ll say “well, look at the car they’re driving, I think I will buy some art from them.”
It’s good to be home. The longer we've been back, the more feasible it seems to keep driving old cars. And hey, with the money we'll save, we could buy art, which really would improve the quality of our life. Sometimes I think we might have actually bought something if there were no salesmen between us and the cars. Maybe that will be another blog: sales lessons learned from car salesmen- what not to do.
1/1: Sojourn in Shopping Land
We just spent a week in house in a subdivision of very similar houses, which lay within an even bigger subdivision containing more of the same. From the air, the place appears maze-like, the streets bending in upon one another, occasionally opening into a cul-de-sac or the baseball diamond of a school. The maze is bisected by a wide, multiple lane avenue, and again by an interstate highway, around which are clustered the large flat roofs of shopping complexes, around which are parked thousands of cars. Jets from the nearby airport frequently fly over this area after they take off, which is how I was able to see it from this perspective as we left.
Somehow, the aerial view of suburbia doesn’t inspire awe for the beauty of our planet. Rather, it’s hard not to wonder how it got like this and where it’s going. It’s easy to think that the people living in such maze-like surroundings are scurrying around, searching for cheese at the end of the path... or more to the point, money and then the things that money buys.
That’s what we did while we were there; after all, it was Christmas. We found ourselves elbow to elbow among hordes of shoppers, bedazzled and overwhelmed by stuff. And we wanted it all: the ipods and all the i-accessories, the huge, skinny televisions and the gadgets meant to simplify our lives. We even wanted the books about how to simplify your life. They recommended getting rid of stuff, but all lacked chapters on what to do with your books about getting rid of stuff. Mostly though, we just looked and came home exhausted, nearly convinced that we should make more money so we could buy more of this stuff.
Overheard: “we vacationed at _____, where we would love to live full-time if we didn’t have bills to pay.”
Huh. We often hear visitors to Stonington saying the same thing. We get a lot of questions that seem to be roundabout ways of the questioner imagining themselves in our shoes. Often, they seem to assume that we have some advantage that they don’t: some stockpile of money that enables us to live where we want. We don’t have that stockpile of money, but we try to have an absence of those bills and debts to pay. After all: if you don’t spend money, you don’t have to earn it.
Our sojourn in shopping-land coincided with our increased perception that we needed to buy a new car. I say “perception”, but it is quickly becoming a tangible need. We start off thinking we’ll spend the money we’ve saved to buy something maybe five years old, but we discover that those used cars hold their value pretty well, and the price isn’t so much lower than an almost new car. And gosh, why buy that almost new car when there’s brand-new economy cars for less than fifteen-grand? But hey- if you’re gonna spend fifteen grand, you’re getting a loan anyway, and what’s a couple more thousand to get the car you really want? By now we’ve resolved to spend our savings, plus three-hundred dollars a month for the next four or five years. And gosh, if you’re making that commitment, why not check-out those cool mid-size SUVs in the low to mid twenties?
Next Blog: We Visit Car Dealers