Katie’s 2008 Jetta has been due for it’s big 30K service for a little while now and we wanted to wait until we got her up to the bay area to get the work done. On Friday, I had to run to the office really quick and Katie came with. Not too much excitement but on our way back to the apartment, I remember that her car needed service and the VW dealership was on the way home. We swung on in, made the appointment for the very next day at 9:30a and proceeded to peruse the lot. Now, we love to fantasy shop… we know good and well that we have no intention of buying a car, right? Yea, that’s what we thought!
So we met up with a salesman, Mark, who reminded us of our pal Joe back in SoCal. We liked him immediately. We first had our eyes set on a used 2008 Toureg, but it turned out to be WAY too expensive for our taste. We wanted to look at other options and started to make our way down towards the Routan’s (VW’s mini van) and Katie started to lose it! She kept squeezing my hand and shaking her head… but I’m not getting it. I was warm on the idea, she wasn’t, so we moved on. Maybe after the second kid is born we’ll explore the mini van option, but until then, we’ll stick with the SUV range!
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This morning I traveled down to the Shell station of Lyons avenue and saw what I thought was an error, 87 octane for $1.69. This Shell station is always the lowest on our side of town and this morning they didn’t disappoint! When I first moved to LA, gas was around $1.65/gal and that was back in ’01. When I was in high school, it was $1.25… if it ever hits that low again, I will seriously consider making my classic car a daily driver.

View all the photos here
When you think of Thanksgiving, what comes to mind? Just a few that come to my mind: Family, turkey, pumpkin pie, pilgrims… and with Thanksgiving 08, I can add one more to the list: theft. My (Josh’s) mom is in town from England and went shopping on black Friday with Katie at the Grove. I had to work so Katie getting a shopping buddy that wasn’t me worked out perfectly. When I got home from work, we all headed over to Aunt Susan’s for a very nice family dinner. We returned home at about midnight and hit the rack shortly after.
When I woke up the next morning, I had planned to make a waffle breakfast, but needed a few supplies from the grocery. I grabbed my keys and headed out the door. When I got down to the parking garage, I discovered that my passenger front window had been smashed in.
The truly ironic part, I had nothing of street value in my car. The thieves took my prescription sun glasses…. that’s it.
I went back upstairs to tell Katie and Mom what had happened and to call the Sheriff. Once the Sheriff was on their way, Katie came down to the garage to wait with me for the deputy to arrive. Katie’s car was parked once space away with a SUV separating our cars, so I couldn’t see her car. Katie went over to see if anyone else was hit.. then she saw her car. Her driver side front window had been smashed!
Katie ran upstairs to get her keys and wallet for the deputy, but she couldn’t find her wallet. The wallet was in the car! We figured that when Katie paid for parking at the Grove, her wallet missed the purse and fell in the crack between the seat and door. When the thieves smashed her window to get her sunglasses… they got an unexpected bonus. Once the officer took our statements and info, he ordered finger prints and split. Katie and I ran up stairs and started the process of canceling all our credit cards.
The thieves charged a healthy amount at a few local stores, but nothing extreme. Now, because they stole credit cards, this is considered a higher crime on the scale of what the police will investigate. They can now pull the surveillance tapes of all the shops the thieves visited.. which puts a face to the crime.
The finger print tech says that our area is being hit hard and they are out here weekly for break-ins. She also told us that our case will enable the Sheriff to go farther now that they have moved up to identity theft. Sting operations and bait cars are in the works… and we now have 4 detectives on the case. I sure hope they catch these jerks.
So… all in all.. not a very happy Thanksgiving, but at least it put alot of things in perspective for us. The rest of the photos of our cars can be found here.