Morrigan Kig

My finance went through but it turns out the car I had initially had my eye on is still waiting on finance to clear for the other buyer. But the car I have reserved is still mine. I have asked to wait until the buyer's finance clears or fails on the other car to ultimately decide which one to go for. If it fails, I can get the original one I had my eye on. If it fails, I have the car I reserved.

Both are the same model, just a few years in between them.

I have reserved a new car for around 15K USD. Let's see if my credit finance agreement goes through

Today seems like a high pollen count. Went out for a walk, came back with itchy, streaming eyes and sneezing....

Got an update from my hire car company -- they've extended my hire by a week, citing "exceptional circumstances" (sure, and not the fact that no-one is hiring cars right now -- so much that Hertz is filing for bankruptcy protection)

It does mean I have one week to sort out a new car....

Finally had some progress on chasing the final cheque for my old car. They say it's now in the post and I should receive it within the next 48 hours. However it does mean I'm now within the final 7 days of my hire car and they will be contacting me within the next 7 days to pick up the car. But I have no new car yet because of the lockdown so I appealed their decision to end my hire and ask them to reconsider since I can't buy a car when all the showrooms are closed.

Got a call from one of the showrooms I emailed during lockdown. They are now back at work and are following up on enquiries. They are not the closest, but still pretty close. I've scheduled an appointment with them for June to look at some cars and maybe test drive a few. I have a two hour slot with them.

Unfortunately, this has happened, and MCM Comic Con has been cancelled for the rest of the year. Birmingham was originally postponed from March, but I chose not to take their offer of rescheduling my tickets since the hotels were too expensive during that period.

London also got postponed and I was originally going to consider going to that, but with my car totalled, I had to cancel. And now that got cancelled outright too.

So.... no MCM this year. :-(

Statement from MCM (https://www.mcmcomiccon.com/) for those who can't be bothered to go to their site

Contemplating whether to move my blog onto a domain and putting my pictures there instead of, or as well as Instagram....

Shower drain finally unblocked. Looks like this had been slowly happening for a long time (like YEARS). We tried everything from caustic soda, bleach, plughole unblockers, even this thing

None of them worked until we got someone in to look and they narrowed it down to the joining pipe leading to the sewer pipe. When they removed it (and drained the backed up water), the joining pipe had picked up a huge amount of black stuff, possibly rust, not sure. They cleared that, put the pipe back on, and the water started flowing through.

After nearly three days of not being able to shower properly, I savoured being able to clean myself properly :)

It's been one shitty year so far, and the past few weeks have been even worse.

COVID-19, job cuts, pay cuts, redundancies, early termination of contractors, followed by my car getting wrecked, and being unable to test drive a new car due to showrooms being locked down, and now, my shower drains are blocked and we can't get anyone out to look at it, because of lockdown...

I've been playing Magic the Gathering: Arena for a while, but since Ikoria came out, I've been consistently losing everything. The game no longer carries any fun so I've ditched that for something more relaxing and casual. Planet Zoo.

It's a game where you build and maintain a zoo and in Franchise mode you setup zoos across the world. I'm slowly working my way through the career mode to learn the ropes of the game and the graphics are pretty impressive. They've made a really noticeable effort to make the animals look realistic.

It's a nice relaxing casual game and you can zoom in to get some nice pics like the above. And with a few of hacking, it works under Linux too. So in theory, I should be able to play this on my Pixelbook

I'm now hunting for cars to buy after my old car got written off.

I'm definitely going for a hybrid. My initial choice was Prius, but is around 20K GBP (~25K USD) new at best.

Used is around 15K-20K GBP (~18K-~25K USD)

Maybe I could go for a Yaris or Auris. Both have hybrid options, and used, the are 10K-15K GBP (~12K-18K USD) for the Auris, and 10K-12K GBP (~12K-15K USD) for the Yaris.

While the Yaris tends to be cheaper, and it's about the same size as my previous car, they seem to come with less options -- all the used car listings, don't contain important options for me: a/c and parking sensors. Anyone who has driven without working aircon will know how hard that is, especially in hot temperatures. That being said, when I lifted the filter to allow non-hybrids, I found one match that has the aircon and parking sensors, and was really cheap, but has a lower MPG, and road tax is chargeable as it is not a hybrid.

Hybrids do not need to pay for road tax as they are green cars. Most noteably, this cheap option does not appear to have a service history and has 2 owners, one or more of those may have been a business. But only racked up 20,000 miles.

When filtering for these options and a few extras (like <5 years, 40K miles max, etc.), the only ones on the list are Auris models. Which are slightly more expensive than the Yaris, and are no longer produced new. So that's something I'll have to bear in mind. It might get harder to find parts for the car should anything happen...

Well, I had to declare my car off road before it was picked up by the recyclers and I got a cheque in the post today from the DVLA to refund me part of the road tax for my old car.

I also got a cheque from the other guy's insurance company to cover their side. Now just need to wait for the salvage agent's cheque too.

Guess the fact I got the cheque from the insurance company means they accept the blame (though I can't see how they couldn't...)

My car finally got picked up by the salvage agent, and in the pouring rain.

My insurance advised me the difference in insurance cover will be refunded, but since I have only one car on the insurance, my cover is terminated. Not surprising since I only have one car and since I have NO car now, there's no point in having motor insurance when there's no motor to cover...

With the Covid pandemic not looking like it's going to end anytime soon, I'm really looking to reduce any unnecessary spends. This isn't helped with by the fact my car got wrecked by an idiot who had been drinking -- that's cause him at least $10,000 of claims against his insurance which he can't realistically wriggle out of since he crashed into legally parked cars and caused three out of the four damaged cars to be written off. The fourth MAY be repairable, but considering mechanics, like everyone else are also on lockdown, that may take a while to confirm.

I have a hire car to do my weekly shopping trips, and that's costing nearly $100 a day -- also coming out of the other guy's insurance.

That drink of his is going to cost him more than he initially expected.

My car is due to be picked up to be scrapped today (was actually meant to be yesterday, but the driver conveniently called in sick).

Since I'm going to need to buy a car soon, and am getting pretty strapped for cash, I'm stripping down on stuff I have subscriptions for. FitBit, Endomondo, Strava, Spotify, I'm ditching all the subscriptions I used to have. They're luxuries I don't need right now. These all function fine without a subscription, and in fact, FitBit actually have a 3 month trial for Premium which I'll use, and immediately cancel the subscription after starting the trial, so it doesn't continue to charge me after July.

I was hoping to buy a house this year, too, but not sure how feasible that is, considering I also now need to manage a car finance plan too....

For fuck's sake, DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE.

So today I decided to order a pizza lunch for the house. I went and ordered two mediums, and two portions of garlic bread, one with cheese and one without. Ordered from Pizza Hut.

Pizza Hut then called me to say they were out of garlic bread and what would I like to replace them with. So after checking with the others, I told them to replace them with potato wedges.

Pizza Hut had already sent the pizzas though. So they would send the wedges by another driver.

In other words, Pizza Hut were sending a driver to deliver two boxes of potato wedges.... If they had just waited a bit longer, they could have delivered all of the items in one go.

And also point to note. Both drivers delivered using cars not motorbikes.

Problem is deciding what I should write. Maybe lengthier articles can go here, shorter ones to my FB page? I don’t know yet….

Haven’t posted to this blog for absolutely ages….

I should change that.