Yrae Chronicles

The Shagna is sold! Woo! I got a text on Friday from someone interested in checking it out on Saturday, so she came up on Saturday afternoon with her husband and adorable three-year-old boy. The car was for her husband so he took it for a test drive while the three-year-old kicked autumn leaves and was generally adorable and I talked to the mum, who reminds me very much of my cousin. So husband came back, looking generally very impressed, said it drives well and has a good powerful engine (always been its biggest point, it's got guts, that car) and he really liked it :D They had a budget of $2500 and I had it listed for $2700, so we negotiated to $2550. They drove off to take out a $500 deposit from the bank, and will come back on Tuesday or Wednesday with the remainder and to pick up the car!

SOLD SHAGNA AWW YEAH.

I also got another quote yesterday morning for the tank, which was significantly less than the others I've had. Two more to come next week and then I'm going to actually make a decision and get this garden happening!

Tomorrow is a public holiday for Adelaide Cup, then a four-day week, followed by another four-day week, Easter, and a third four-day week in a row. And Anzac Day next month. Autumn is a damn good time of the year for long weekends. I'm going to go to the beach, probably spending some time writing, making a new guacamole-stuffed chicken recipe I found the other day, finishing off the fig jam I started today... mmm yessss public holiday ♥

That Smoke I Smell Isn't Someone's Barbecue: A Tale of Living In The Hills by Annarti

Thursday night I smelt smoke when I got home. Check the CFS and sure enough, there's a 'Completed' grass and stubble fire on the road across the valley from me. Then, 10-ish that night, MORE DRAMA. I heard sirens, refreshed the CFS and see an 'Assist SAPOL' (South Australia Police) item ON EVE ROAD. THAT'S MY STREET. The sirens kept getting louder until they stopped RIGHT AT THE END OF MY DRIVEWAY. Carefully crept outside with my phone locked onto the CFS, making sure there wasn't a dangerous situation (I mean, the CFS are involved so it's unlikely to be a gunman or something, but still) and saw the firetruck at the end of the driveway was still full of fieries looking down at whatever SAPOL were doing. The website incident had by this stage upgraded to 'Building Fire' so I, and a bunch of other locals, stood at the end of the driveway in my dressing gown watching all the flashing lights. There was an ambo with its light turned off, and the driver just sitting there reading the paper. Also I couldn't smell smoke.

After a while the fieries all started driving off, and one fiery came over to ask if I knew the people in the house two down from me (nope) and to tell me what was going on. Very small house fire, but the owners weren't home and the implication was that it was deliberately lit. Dick move. Especially so soon after the Pinery fires, seriously dick move. Doubt I'll find anything more about that, but that was a fun bit of drama for the evening!

Moving on, today has been cleaning day, though I've only done one item on the list. Started at about 11:30. Three and a half hours later and the Shagna is as shiny as it'll ever be. There was enough road grime around the bottom of the doors that you could've written 'clean me' in it with your finger, except that it was road grime not dust, and that would be icky. The hub caps--all three of them, goddamnit--were just about black. Now they're the same champagne colour as the car again. Oh, and I had that front left panel replaced on Thursday, so that's no longer dented. Less than $200, so worth it. Cleared out all the shopping bags and floating pens and transferred them to Yoshi the Mazda, got rid of all the parking tickets and shopping receipts, and found $10 under the driver's seat, score!

Yesterday I also got the rego for Yoshi the Mazda transferred and paid my stamp duty, so it's officially mine, now =D

Tomorrow I'll take photos of the Shagna when I take it over to Mum and Dad's, where it'll live until it sells.

Still want to vacuum the house, put my clothes away and sweep the kitchen floor, but after washing the car in 37-ish I need a break. Hey look, a wip! I've since done the trunk and most of the branches of the left-most tree you can see on the ref. Hoping to have it finished today or tomorrow. I had a lot of fun on the reflections. This billabong is so glassy flat and gives the most beautiful soft reflections.

I drove this gorgeous little creature this afternoon! I love it. I want it very badly. It's been garaged its whole life, including when the owner parked it when she went to work (KNEW it had to be the dude's wife who drove it), not a dent or a scratch anywhere on it, made it happily up the freeway at 100 without me having to floor it, and I talked him down to $10,750.

So the competition tomorrow will be this one, which is 2 years younger but has done an extra 15-ish thousand k, and is only a Neo when the other's a Maxx. Basically I'm sold on the Maxx but it'll be nice to have some leverage.

So next week I'll have a new car! Eee! I'm going to have to get onto sprucing up the Shagna. And figuring out how much the thing's worth.

Oh no it's the car I want for about a grand and a half more than it's worth.

I've been following these searches for a good month now. I know what a Mazda 2 is worth. They go Neo-Genki-Maxx in terms of features/price. So we have at this point in time:

An '08 Genki for $9.2k but that one does have 100,000km on the clock when everything else has under 50k so this is less of a benchmark. It'd be coming up for a major service that could easily add an extra grand on. So let's be generous and call it 10k.
'09 Neo for $9.1k
'09 Neo for $10.25k
That one lonely little '08 Genki on Carsguide for $10.2k
A frigging 2010 Maxx for $10.9k. Same model and two years younger for a full $1000 less.

And that's just what's there RIGHT NOW, not including the stuff I've seen come and go over the last month. Ignoring anything newer because that's unrealistic. But yeah. No way is an '08 worth $12k, even if it IS a gorgeous green.

I'm going to leave it for a week so as not to appear eager, then go for a test drive and see how willing the owner might be to drop some many dollars off the price. If not, then eh, another green Mazda 2 will come up. They're everywhere.

Then I'll have to prepare to sell the Shagna. It's getting a service tomorrow, so that's a start.

And, once again, I'm glad I'm not a Queenslander. Anything that was left of it after the floods has now been flattened by Cyclone Yasi. Who'd be a Queenslander, srsly? D: *holds them* Poor sods need some serious time off =(

Plus side, it's petered out to a tropical depression rather than wiggling along the coast like they can do, so yay. We'll be getting the edge of it tomorrow. THUNDER AND LIGHTNING WOOOOO.

Also, probably going car shopping again this weekend. Dun wanna~ .-. I just want a car, I don't want to go though the actual act of looking for and buying a car. Clothes shopping is fun. Kitchen shopping is fun. Pencil and art supply store shopping is fun. CAR SHOPPING SUCKS.

I'm so totally buying this. Just went out to take it for a test drive, and probably would have bought it if, yaknow, I had another person with me, but alas. Can't drive both Bruce and Green Bruce (?) back with just me. So~ trying to pin someone down for Friday after work to come with.

BUT YES. Same year as Bruce, but omg the owner's kept it in beautiful condition, far better than what Bruce was when we got him. Holdens are kinda notorious for bits of trim falling off--Bruce has lost just about all his, and Dad's Calais (basically an up-market Commodore with more gadgetry), which is newer by a coupla years, is losing bits of trim all over the place. Holden build quality for you. But this one? It's lost ONE PIECE. ONE. Even the aerial is still intact. She's a smoker, but there's no sign of smoke or cigarettes having ever been in the car, immaculate paint work except a scratch on the boot where she forgot to put a towel down when using a bike rack, clean exhaust, etc and so on.

I know SBA about the mechanical aspects, but all this tells me she's taken really good care of it, so~ yes. I'm happy. I'll still try and see if I can get one of Colin's mechanic mates to have a look over it as well, because I really have no idea what I'm looking at there, but I can't foresee anything major here. This baby is near-as mine.

AND IT'S GREEN. HEE.

Remember this? I just got a message from the girl we saved from burning wrecks of car :D

Just wanna let you know what happened the other day at courts. It's been reconsidered by the prosecutors, your witness statement made a big difference =) Thank you so much for spending your time for me. I really appreciate it. Have a lovely weekend =)

D'aww~ :D I feel squee =3

I has Windows 7, yay. Also, Adobe CS5, more yay :D This is the least note-worthy news I have so I get it out of the way early on o/

So, last night was footy! First Saturday night game of the year, bloody finally. So off we went with Bruce the Commodore, two thermoses of soup and one of pasta, and as many warm clothes and layers as we could possibly wear, because if there's anywhere you're allowed to look like a dick it's at the footy.

'Wow!' say the Annas, who are frankly awesome and brilliant, 'We're going to be there, like, half an hour early! That never happens!'

'BANG!' went the taxi and another car at the intersection.

'Look out!' shouted one Anna.

'Holy crap!' shouted the other, slamming the breaks on (only not because I was already slowing down to stop at the red light the taxi had just tried running, so it was more just a slightly quicker stop than it would otherwise have been.)

So while someone was calling the emergency services, another guy who somehow had a high-vis jacket and clip folder and looked very official directed traffic around all out cars with hazards on, and everyone else stood around gawking, Anna P implemented first aid~ and we saved people from burning wrecks of cars! Only without the fire. They weren't burning. But they were both write-offs, I'm sure, and both deployed their airbags. No serious injuries--the girl in the car turning right had a sore chest from the seatbelt, and was pretty close to going into shock, but that was the worst of it.

We hung around until the ambos arrived, keeping people away from the taxi which was, of course, LPG and could explode at any moment. Left name and number because we were WITNESSES omg.

And then off we went to the footy and sat down about a minute before the bounce. All in a day's work for a coupla Crows supporters X3

And then we thrashed Essendon by 84 points, and made everyone around us jealous with our thermoses of pumpkin soup and pea and ham soup and pasta.

So, how many people did you save from car crashes this evening? Oh, just the one? Well, keep trying X3

It took 'em until the final episode of season 13, but Top Gear has finally had a REAL ute :D Not the stupid American pickup trucks. REAL UTE. I love that every Aussie car they've reviewed (all, what, three of them?) hasn't had a bad word said about it but typical mocking of the Aussies XD

Also, Poms can't say Bathurst. Unless they're northern. I imagine northerners can say the 'bath' bit right.