With Proper Training…

Well seems as though Brown Paper Tickets had some sort of glitch in their system that caused tickets for the April 30th Rat City Rollergirls bout to be available for sale early. When I went to the event page at 10:30am realizing I was 30 minutes past the sell time, there was a note indicating that the online tickets were already completely sold out due to the glitch.

The League was selling some tickets in person at Marley’s in Ballard, but that was a pretty good drive and tickets were limited each day (100 on Saturday and 50 on Sunday) so I didn’t end up going out there. It would have made a good excuse to go check out some good fish ‘n chips places out there though.

Anyway, I just found out that they’re going to have an eBay auction for two tickets plus a copy of each of the limited edition posters for the bouts thus far. I’ll have to check it out when it goes up, but seeing as how I just had to pay a ton in taxes I don’t see myself splurging for tickets.

I’ve never been a fan of talking on my cell phone and driving. I’ve also never been a fan of riding in the car with Yaeka while she is driving and talking on her cell phone. Washington just passed a law recently making the use of a cell phone without a hands free device while driving a secondary infraction.

More importantly, I fell down the stairs today while talking on a cell phone. If I can’t even walk while on a cell phone, I really shouldn’t be driving while talking on one either.

Well, like Yaeka’s car Rupert, my van surpassed the 100,000 mile mark. Named after the state containing the long ass portion of I-81, Virginia has been a reliable vehicle except for that one time the water pump broke in Ithaca due to the sub-zero temperatures.

I didn’t remember to take the digital camera this morning to capture the moment on my way home, but it actually wouldn’t have been that exciting. There was no magical “click” into 100000. It slowly turned and the 1 didn’t even become fully visible until past the 100002 mark. If you’re looking for dramatic moments every 100,000 miles, don’t get a Chevy Astro.

There’s really only one thing I’d complain about my car and that is the awful gas mileage. Granted it does much better than the 12-13 mpg I got in Daisy the short bus and actually does better than the Dodge Dakota I drove before it, but with rising gas costs, I’ve been itching for something new. Lately I’ve had a severe case of Prius envy and nearly called the bank to get details regarding my pre-approved auto loan, but did some calculations and realized it just wasn’t realistic.

For now I’m content to spend my $160-$200 a month on gas and am thankful that I work in a county with cheaper gas. Gas in Puyallup can be up to $.18 cheaper a gallon than in Issaquah. The one thing still in my mind that could be a solution to my outrageous gas costs is getting a motorcycle/scooter. Aprilia’s Scarabeo 500 is damn nice looking and has more than adequate power to handle my 35 mile freeway commute. The scooter or “automatic motorcycle” as it has been called is capable of getting the same gas mileage as the Prius and would be about $20,000 cheaper. The other benefit of a motorcycle/scooter is that you can drive in the carpool lane. Most likely I’ll just dream of getting a new vehicle every day until Virginia decides that she’s ready to retire.