Drives Like A Girl

(Yeah, 2006 is definite used-car territory now. I originally wrote this article in 2006.)

Infiniti doesn’t need to do much to maintain interest in their popular G35 Coupe. Three years after its debut, it shows little signs of aging. It still has power above and beyond every competitor in its class and the roads are crawling with them. So, how to improve on this solid groundwork for 2006? Apparently you tweak the headlights and taillights and otherwise leave well enough alone.

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I know what you’re thinking. That I crashed a car. I did. But this story really isn’t about that. It’s about what not to do after you ball it up.

The weekend was going to be great. Two full track days at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca completely gratis. With parents living 45 minutes away, there wasn’t even a hotel bill to pay. And it would be my first real Laguna Seca experience, because the previous time ended on the 2nd lap of the 2nd session at turn two when the brake rotors broke off the hubs. That should have been a sign. Read the rest of this entry »

At 5:30 AM on September 7th the phone rang. It was our wake up call. As hard as it was to drag my tired behind out of the warm bed, I knew it would be worth it. The day ahead promised high-speed fun and education at the National Auto Sport Association’s High Performance Driving Event (NASA’s HPDE) at Willow Springs International Raceway in Rosamond, California. Read the rest of this entry »

On my way back from lunch I walked past a cook wearing all white. Black would seem like the obvious choice to me, because it hides most stains. (Then again, you can’t bleach it. But that saves money on bleach, eh?) At a sushi bar last weekend I flung soy sauce all over myself and boyfriend with a spectacular slip of hand, releasing my water glass right over the saucer. And I was very grateful for my black tank top and dark wash blue jeans at that moment. Maybe there’s another reason chefs wear white. Which is the sign of a better cook: more or less obvious food splatters on your kitchen scrubs?

When I got home I found that there was even soy sauce in my hair. On top of my head. There were several soy sauce freckles hiding amongst my natural ones, the difference between which my boyfriend couldn’t tell. At least I didn’t splatter the other guests at the packed bar. The teenage girl with her parents to Dave’s left thought it was quite “nicely done.” I’m here to please.

Black wheels.
Silver lips.

Played.
Out.

Random thought for the day: What kind of health insurance do doctors have?

The last two weeks were the open enrollment period for everything that has to do with insurance at my company. It was heavily stressed that we MUST enroll by November 16. In typical indecisive fashion, I put off doing some research on the four health plan options until the latter part of the period during which we MUST enroll. (Really? Is someone’s head going to roll if we don’t?) The last day rolls around, and I still haven’t decided. There is nothing on our literature giving an exact cutoff time on the 16th, so I asked our HR and was told I could enroll online until midnight. There was no specification of time zone, so my assumption was local time. All our literature says we can call the help center from 9-5 LOCAL time, so there was no reason for me to deduce this could be otherwise.

At 10:40 pm, while I’m in the middle of using the online tools, I find I’ve been logged out again due to inactivity on the main site. (They have an annoyingly short inactivity logout time, and to top it off, you can’t even create your own username to log in with. Every time you have to input an alphanumeric code they assigned.) I log back in, and the tools are gone. The enrollment stuff is gone. I’ve officially not enrolled in anything, will have no health insurance of any kind come January 1, 2008.

Well, there’s nothing I can do about it over the weekend, so on Monday I call the company that is our new benefits administrator and explain what happened. I’m told the web site should have shut down at 12 am Eastern time, 9 pm local time. If they let it go until 10:30, they might as well have thrown in the last hour and a half! She puts me on hold and comes back to tell me she can’t do anything. What? The customer service people can’t enroll me over the phone despite the innocent snafu?

No. I must fill out a FORMAL APPEAL explaining why I missed the enrollment window, which will then be sent to the insurance gods at Omnicom, apparently.

Ridiculous.

I’m done with project cars.

My 240SX is finally done being painted. The color is awesome and it’s going to look great, but there are some aspects of the quality of the job I’m not happy with. I guess I have no right to complain considering the deal I got. Now it’s back in Dave’s garage in many pieces, and I’m afraid to put it back together for fear of scratching it. It’s even worse to stand by and watch someone else touch it. The clear coat is still really soft, and I’ve already messed it up. I want nothing more than for it to be put back together though. It needs to go away and come back in one unscratched piece… Dave and I will be putting it back together over the next several weeks.

So my blog is major boring, eh? Well, Dave and I stripped my 240SX and had it towed off for body work and paint prep over a month ago. I can’t get a hold of the guy who is supposed to paint it. His phone has sent me to a voicemail box that’s full for a week and a half, so I can’t even leave a message. I hope my engine is still in it. Can’t wait to get the damn thing back in all one color. Well, two.

I’m currently slouched in the corner of a cheap black pleather couch in the curtained-off lounge area of Stage 1 at South Bay Studios. It’s in the oh-so-charming industrial area of Long Beach, California, off of one of the most broken and abused roads in the known area. Big rigs do pavement no favors. The road does my stiffer-sprung 240SX no favors.

We’re in day four of the G37 Coupe brochure studio shoot. The Radio Paradise internet radio station is streaming on the photographer’s laptop. Their playlists are a crapshoot; one day it will be the most infinitely pleasurable mix you’ve ever heard, and the next you can’t even suffer through 2 songs. Today seems to be a classic rock day, and besides the Hendrix song that just played, I’m not digging it. There’s no sure-thing alternative though, so I’m not going to say anything to the crew. Maybe tomorrow’s songs will be better.

Styrofoam cups are the shit. I poured my can of coke into one with a handful of ice cubes an hour ago, and it’s still as cold as if it just fell out of the fridge. Not even plastic can match that. Glass? Pfft. The chill starts leaving the drink faster than a 3rd gen RX7 can blow up on a dyno. Which leads me to an interior design dilemma: plastic looks cheap and unsophisticated, while glass does not. I like cold drinks to stay cold without watering down too much. I want to be more like a sophisticated adult. Perhaps screw it all, and go with styrofoam and the image of transience?

If I wander through the halls, maybe I’ll see someone famous. It hasn’t happened yet.

Tacky plastic dealership license plate frames. Chrome dealership license plate frames. Lame slogans. “You’ll never get a lemon - At Toyota of Orange!” Every new car that leaves the dealer’s lot goes with a little extra advertising. The part that gets me is that the vast majority of buyers leaves this blatant advertising on the car for its lifetime! Not even when they put their shiny new plates on, when they have to physically remove the screws that hold the ad to their car, do they think of throwing it away. And after that, the even larger majority will never again remove the frame. Next year’s registration sticker migrates shamefully down the plate, specifically to avoid removing the frame again. Now, there are a lot of unintelligent people in this world. My best guess is that all these people are unwittingly and/or lazily advertising the very dealer that is probably raping their bank account. Dealers are smart, eh?

The ultimate is the body shop plate frame. This is a rare specimen, because apparently people are either embarrassed enough or smart enough to take this frame off when their recently wrecked vehicle returns from the shop. But it never fails to get a snicker from me when I catch them.

For the record, my car’s license plate is naked.