On a Lighter Note

Yesterday's post was a little Debbie Downer. But, in an attempt for full disclosure the whole week wasn't rotten and has ended on a upswing!

We did in fact purchase a Guam Bomb early last week. We are now the proud owners of a 1998 Nissan Altima with 115,000 miles, bad tint job, a crazy rear window sticker (that I am convinced is some marking to identify us as drug dealers or gang members), and deployed airbags. Pictures will be posted soon- but honestly it doesn't look bad on the outside- it's the inside that is super scary- cigarette burns, a strange smell that the can of car deodorizer only covers with a sickeningly sweet smell, it feels dirty and grimy, did I mention the already deployed airbags? Oh, and if you want to ride in it, I'll probably charge you a quarter... it shakes so much whenever you're stopped, well let's just say you should pay me a quarter...

We bought the car on Monday night (note of advice- buying a used car in a dimly lot parking lot at night- not a good idea!!). We had seen it in the daylight a few times and it looked ok, but Don was only able to test drive it at night. Although the guy we bought it from told us it hadn't been in a wreck (and nothing came back bad on Carfax), we came to discover, it had to have been since the front airbags have been deployed. Of course, we didn't discover this until 2 days after we bought it. Why would something that obvious take so long to figure out? Well, in Guam it is de rigueur to outfit car dashboards with dashmats. I am not sure exactly what purpose they serve (is it to help keep the car cool, is it to prevent the dashboard from cracking, is to cover deployed airbags?), but many cars around here have them.

As the proud owners of a "new" car in Guam, you have to register the car in your name within like 24 hours of taking ownership. So, on Tuesday it was up to me get the car put in our names. I was really worried about doing this because I thought I had to drive all over Guam to get the registration taken care of. In addition to having to navigate these unfamiliar waters, I had to bring my little co-pilot, Price with me. I just envisioned hours of DMV hell with a 13 month old in tow. But I put on my big girl, being a military wife is my super power, panties and dealt with the task at hand.

I loaded Price up and we took off (luckily we still had the rental car, so I wasn't driving the unsafe vibrauto all over). We made it to the DMV right as the sky let loose, I took it as a good sign that the storm passed as quickly as it arrived. We got into the DMV and I went straight to the driver's license window to get my temporary driving permit. I had read some where that you had to get a one day permit to drive, and assumed it was a driving permit. After standing there for about 5 minutes trying to explain to the guy what I needed, I realized I was an idiot and didn't need a temporary driver's license, I needed a temp registration permit. So, I got into another line and found out I didn't need that either, I just needed a copy of my insurance and to fill out a form and they would change the title over. Granted, I didn't have an insurance card with me and they wouldn't accept the email Don sent me with the insurance info, so then I had to figure out how to get a copy- I could drive 15 miles back to the house, hook up the printer, find paper and print out the card or I could take a risk that the USO which was just a few miles away would have a printer and let me print it off. The risk paid off! The USO was awesome (if you are military and in Guam, I HIGHLY recommend going- it was so nice, I wish we had taken advantage of it while we were staying in our hotel). We left the USO and headed back to the DMV and took care of our business. The whole process only took 3 hours.

On Wednesday night, we found out that my car- the GOOD Altima had made it to Guam. We were hopeful that we would be able to pick it up on Friday, but they didn't release it for pick up until too late in the day to get everything done that we needed to do to get it (I will have to get a temporary registration permit and a safety inspection, so I'm expecting this process to take 5 hours). We think it's funny that the car showed up a day after we bought the bomb. We bought the bomb so we wouldn't have to rent a car for 6 more weeks- it was just cheaper to buy a car. Oh well... now we're free to roam about the island again!!

We had a nice weekend after I threw myself a pity party and had a good cry and then got over the blahs. Yesterday, we went to a party at the base pool and today we went to church at the base chapel.