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Today’s Topic #6 June 13, 2005

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You are making a time capsel for your great, great, great grandchildren whom you will never meet. What would you put in it and why?

Today’s Topic #5 June 7, 2005

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If you had only these two choices…. what would you choose and why?

To steal from a children’s charity, or to sell drugs to one small child?

(this has been a borrowed question from the game “Would you rather?”)

Cloudland Canyon May 30, 2005

Posted by Liz in : General , comments closed

Quickly becoming a Memorial Day weekend tradition a group of us got together and went camping. This year’s location was at the Cloudland Canyon Campground.

This year was a small group then last year, but it was equally as fun! Watson & Dee came again, and this year we were joined by camping newcomers: Julie & Chris with their two children Katelynn & Matt. (Much applause to these very well behaved kids!) We are already looking forward to next year’s group camping trip where ever it may be.

We claimed our sites, 11, 3, & 7 which you wouldn’t guess by looking at the numbers, but were close by to one another. Our site was again the headquarters for all the group gatherings as we had the most room and most of the stuff. Ashley got to enjoy everyone this way as well, which I must say she did very good. This has really been a good experience for her, meeting new people and staying relatively calm. (She has come a long way from last year’s trip where she wanted to tackle everyone.)

Now this year we did not come back with a famous quote to continue to repeat all year round like last year’s “Keith, Keith… Oh dear God!” Instead we have the tale of the squirrel that ate… yes I said ate… a hole through Chris & Julie’s tent in order to have a snack upon some lonely hot dog buns. This must have been one hungry squirrel! How do we know that this is indeed the perpetrator? Ashley went into a fit of historical barking and as we looked in the direction that she was looking we see a light brown bushy tail emerging from the tent. Honestly I thought the reason you don’t keep food in your tent was to avoid bears and raccoons, not squirrels!

This year because the weather was nice we were able to go hiking this year. We took a trail to the canyon overlook and to two different waterfalls. Hiking this trail we were given the advice to go to the second fall first and then do the first one. We followed the advice, and I am kind of glad that we did. The second one was a long hike down that required a large amount of stairs. (A real killer coming back up… I think Chris said the count was 200 and something.) Anyways, the waterfall ended up being disappointingly small. On the way back up we stopped at the first waterfall which was beautiful. Here we relaxed from the hike up and watched Ashley jump right in and take as much of a swim as the leash would allow. She was in heaven and hated to leave. When we got back we all rewarded ourselves by kicking up our feet around a nice fire.

Sunday never got as warm as it was supposed to so we gathered around the fire again and talked, played a card game called Once Upon a Time, and enjoyed the ever famous Mad Libs that is defiantly a part of the camping tradition. The rain came, and we all headed to our tents with our nice warm and dry beds.

I have to say I was very impressed by this campground and would highly recommend it! The bathrooms were amazingly clean, and the campsites (the walk-in sites) were nicely spaced out from one another. There are plenty of things to do (plenty of trails to hike, team building activity, outdoor survival class, etc.) to keep you entertained, or you can simply sit back and relax by the fire. We give it the Ashley 5 paws up of aproval!

Overall the weather was nice and we were able to enjoy the weekend under the open sky. If anyone remembers last year… this was a nice change from the tarps that we had to hide underneath the whole time.

Photos will be posted here soon!

Today’s Topic #4 May 30, 2005

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The mystry of the missing sock mate has plagued the great minds of our time.. still the mystery has yet to be solved… what is your theory?

Today’s Topic #3 May 23, 2005

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If an elephant sat on your car, what would you do to entice it to get off of the car?

I Am the Supreme Nerd! May 23, 2005

Posted by Ben in : Random Stuff , comments closed

My name is Benjamin, King of Nerds:
Look upon my nerd-dom, ye Mighty, and despair!

I am nerdier than 98% of all people. Are you nerdier? Click here to find out!

Today’s Topic #2 May 16, 2005

Posted by Liz in : Today's Topic , comments closed

What makes you decide that it is now time to do your laundry? Or do you even bother?

Dragon Con Count Down May 11, 2005

Posted by Liz in : General, Sci-Fi , comments closed

Yes, it is true…I have become a Sci-Fi Nerd! Anne McCaffery is going to be there again this year. I am looking forward to meeting her again, and hoping for another reading! Joss Whedon is going to be there as well, which is cool! This year I am going all out and dressing up too, and I am going to find a group of Klingons to have a drink or two with!!! :-D

Anyways, I just thought I would let all of you know there is 114 days left to buy your tickets (Next deadline is $60 before 5/13/05). Really you should have bought them back in Feb. to get the best price like we did, but you can still get them cheaper now than you will be able to at the door. Ben, Watson, Dee, and I are all going and we would love for you all to join us in the Dragon Con festivities!!!

Today’s Topic May 6, 2005

Posted by Liz in : Today's Topic , comments closed

Remember the days where you looked forward to opening your e-mail and finding that absurd and crazy e-mail from Ben called “Today’s Topic”... well hold onto your pants boys and girls because it’s back and I, Liz Ramsey, have taken over!!!! A new topic shall appear every Monday morning for no other purpose but for your amusement! There shall no longer be an excuse that you have nothing to do!

So, here it is…. the first question…..

Where did the word “knucklehead” come from?

We Bought a New Car! April 1, 2005

Posted by Ben in : General , comments closed

So, we bought a new car last night, and it was the smoothest and most pleasant process I’ve ever been through with a dealer—those are adjectives not usually given to car salespersons or dealerships. But that’s how it was for us.

We bought a 2005 Honda Pilot last night for several reasons: we’ve been in the market for a new car since my 2000 Honda Civic sustained $6300 in hail damage last month, Honda’s 2.9% financing special ended on March 31st, and we’ve been wanting an SUV for a while.

A few weeks ago, I took the Civic to Carmax to get a quote, and they quoted me at $1800—a full $6000 less than what I thought the Blue Book value of the car would’ve been before the hail damage! I thought to myself how cosmetic damage could ruin the value of one’s car so much, but it apparently wasn’t the hail damage that lowered the value. While my car incurred no frame damage from an earlier wreck a few years ago, the body shop welded parts back onto the frame itself, which I’m told weakens the “crumple corners” of the frame. This is what lowered my car’s value so much. Carmax told me that, even with with cosmetic damage repaired, I couldn’t expect to get more than $2000 for my car because of the “frame damage.”

In addition to deciding to buy an SUV for camping and hauling things around, etc., we decided to try out a few “tricks” we’ve heard for buying a car. One is to always buy on the last day of the month. This is because the dealership’s allocation for the next month is determined by how many they sell this month—among other things. Also, we were told to communicate either by e-mail or fax and not to show up in person to discuss prices. If you show up in person, you will not get the lowest deal (a fact that one dealer admitted to me yesterday). Apparently, the salespeople assume that you’ve been shopping around to find the best deal on the Internet if you contact them via e-mail, so they know that you know what other dealerships are offering; thus, they’re likely to be more competitive. If you walk on the lot, they’ll offer you a higher price because they’re more certain they’ll be able to sell you the car since they have you there.

I found that both of these tricks work. For one, we were able to get a below-invoice price. When we’ve walked onto the lot in the past and asked how low they could go on a price, they told us they could go to the invoice price but no lower—which we now know is bull. Another thing is that we asked each salesperson for their “bottom line” final price—the drive-away price including tax, tag, title, destination charges, everything. This tells them that we mean business, that we’re not playing games, and that we’re shopping around for the lowest price. With one dealership—the one we finally went with—we saw that they even knocked an extra $500 off the base price since it was the last day of the month (he even told us this)—we really think what he did was knock off the “destination charge” because Liz questioned it, and he apparently was eager to make the sell.

In the end, we purchased a car for $5000 less than the manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $30,120. Our base price was $25,597, and our drive-away price was $28,320.88. This was the price we got them down to through e-mail and phone conversations without ever visiting the lot, and they never raised it once with extra stupid features (they threw in the mud gards and clear-coat finish for free) when we got to the lot. Had we just visited the lot instead, we wouldn’t have gotten any lower than the invoice price as our base (we know this because Hennesy Honda wouldn’t go any lower than invoice when we visited the lot), which was $27,611.

In the end, we got a great SUV for a great deal thanks to Ben Choi at Curry Honda. I’d recommend him and Curry Honda anytime.

To sum up, here are the buying tips I recommend: