Meditations on Costly Adulting (again!) & Possible Changes in Travel Plans

2024-04-23. Henderson, NV. I’m at my car dealership doing the annual check-up/servicing thing, which I haven’t done as much since COVID and the near disappearance of my daily driving. My 2013 Prius is now 11-years old and been complaining about low tire pressure all winter. I also managed to make through Las Vegas’ rainy season with one semi-functioning windshield wiper. Then last week I discovered that my passenger side headlights were out (which made me feel a bit better ‘cause prior to this I thought my night-driving vision was gone). It was definitely time to service the poor thing.

Looking over previous servicing calls I had guesstimated that today’s work would be around $600. The original plan had been to wait until I got my IRS refund and use that to cover for the servicing. But I got a much bigger refund than anticipated and went a bit crazy and decided to invest in a new MacBook Air (in part because I knew that I could still recycle my iMac while it still held some value…) and a monitor. Alas, I’m now a little depressed because I was way too low on today’s estimate. With the need to purchase four new tires (that I got with a “buy three and get the fourth for $1” deal) today’s bill is going to be about $1000 more than I had guessed. Shit.

I ran into a bit of a snag last week when I was thinking about May’s train-travel plans, partly because I still hadn’t finished with my kitchen sink adventure or figured out my monthly budget. It also felt like, because I needed to be back in Las Vegas less than a week after the wedding in Michigan, that I was trying to shoehorn too much travel into too short of a time. That got me thinking that maybe I should just do the straight shot from Las Vegas/Kingman to Michigan, enjoy the weekend at the wedding and then turn right around and make the train trip back. That plan had the benefit of only needing to account for two days stay in Michigan (and related meals) and far less planning as far as packing clothes and tech. Of course, with the new MacBook Air I starting thinking about getting a new backpack that would accommodate the laptop and my camera setup. That was an unfortunate rabbit hole. I’ve spent far more time on laptop/computer backpacks than on the actual trip reservations. But after today’s unexpected expenditures, I’m having questions about the whole travel thing to begin with. Or maybe, now that I will soon have fully-functioning headlights, I should just do the straight shot trip to Michigan via my car? Ugh. I hate when reality interferes with what I would rather be doing. Well, it looks like I spent enough on my car to have bought another laptop today. Damn.