3 posts tagged “transportation”
This has sure been a crazy week. After discovering my car was stolen on Monday, I went into research mode on the purchase of a new vehicle. Spent oodles of time trying to figure out what would work best for us, what we could afford, etc etc. Even considered not getting anything and trying to get by with just the new bike, maybe augmented with an electric assist motor. The Parentals were very helpful in taking over some babysitting and pick-up of LO, for which I am very grateful.
Wednesday evening I discovered a Craigslist posting for a 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid with carpool stickers and 76k miles on it for $11k. Spoke to the guy, did a Carfax report, priced it on Kelley Blue Book and Edmunds, checked CR reports and fueleconomy.gov. Looked like a good deal. Arranged to go for a test drive on Thursday afternoon. Radio Junkie drove out there (Santa Monica -- why are all my used car deals over 20 miles away?) with me and we checked it out and took it for a spin. Pretty nice car, I have to say, and the carpool stickers would be a big boon for Better Half's commute. So, I arranged to have a mechanic inspect it this morning.
But, around 10:45 Thursday night we get a call from a parking enforcemnet officer. They'd found my car up near LAX and had it towed to some garage in Marina Del Rey. I'm stunned. I ask about the condition. The woman says it seems fine, drivable and all that. Even the stereo was still in it. Called the garage and the guy there said it has "scratches" on the exterior, but that it runs. My fee for having my car stolen is about $250 (not including time spent on searching for a new car and other hassles). And now I'm also wondering if I should have the locks on the car changed and what that'll cost. So, sure, I'm happy that we won't have to buy a new car, but still has been a quite a pain and pretty irksome that the victim pays in these scenarios.
That really turned out to be a bear of a commute coming home. It was the full-on multi-nodal journey. From Fullerton train station to home took about 2 hr. Would have been less if I had not screwed up and take the slower bus on the last leg of the journey. But all the changing got pretty tiresome. I'm thinking tomorrow it makes more sense to just go back to Union Station and transfer there to a bus headed home. It's more miles, but less stress and then I can actually relax a little more on the train and bus b/c I know I won't have to get off in just a few minutes.
What I want to know is what genius designed the Green Line? At the west end of the line, it stops just south of LAX instead of actually going to the airport. Want to catch a flight? Just lug all your bags off the train and take the "convenient" shuttle bus to the airport. Yeah, that'll encourage people to use public transport, won't it? At the east end of the line, it stops 3 miles west of the Norwalk Metrolink station, which means you have to take a bus between the two (biking the route looks seriously life threatening).
The class was actually not bad for an all day class. I find myself somewhat fascinated by the arcane nature of cataloging. There are all these bizarre rules to learn. It is sort of like geometry; once you learn the rules you can follow the logic and create a record. He showed us one curious example when discussing what is called author authority files. This is a list created by the Library of Congress of the authoritative way to refer to specific authors. For example, if you are cataloging The Cat in the Hat, who is the author, Dr. Seuss or Theodore Dreisel? Anyway, the example was for Leslie Lynch King, Jr. Turns out that was Gerald Ford's given name at birth, but it was changed very early in his life after his parents divorced. What was curious was that in the authority file record there were notes taken from Wikipedia about Ford and his name change. i was surprised that the Library of Congress would reference Wikipedia in what is supposed to be its authoritative list! I pointed this out to the instructor, but he said it was legit to use Wikipedia as a source, commenting that it was uncontraversial when it comes to bibliographic data. Oh really? There was also info taken from another source, a published reference text, and i noticed a discrepancy between it and the Wiki info. So clearly at least one of them was incorrect. The fact that I notice such nitpicking details is one reason why I think cataloging might actually be something I will like.
Took a train in LA for the first time this morning. The trains are nice and easy, but there aren't many of them and the stations are not convenient for us. I got up early, drove with Better Half to downtown (which got her there faster thanx to carpool lane), then biked from her office to Union Station. Caught a Metrolink train to Fullerton (takes 37 min.) and biked 3 miles to campus. So now I'm in an all day class on cataloging, which continues tomorrow. The rest of semester will be work conducted online. The way back should be an adventure. Gonna take the Metrolink to Norwalk, shuttle bus to the Green Line train, and transfer at Harbor Freeway to a bus home. We'll see how long that takes. But, after hearing how other classmates struggled with traffic and parking (one woman claimed she spent an hour finding a spot), I don't mind the adventure.
Wanted to write stuff about Big Sis and Little Sis's visits, but now is not the time. Maybe this evening or tomorrow.
