History of my Automobiles’ Past

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Suzanne Schultz Pick


When I bought my cars in Florida, it just happened. My parents loaned me their beige Pontiac right after I first got my license, until I took over their Chevy Beretta. Dear Lord, did I love that car. Just looking at old pictures of it, makes me nostalgic. Cars should give you that kind of emotion. You should feel a kinship to them. My first, proper car. He was so fast (I got it at 120 on US1 in the middle of the night one time.) The bottom was low and the front scraped a lot if you hit a speed hump too hard (as if those really deter you from going fast.) I had this from the time I was 17 up to age 22 or so, I guess. Ah, Beretta. I miss you!

I couldn’t even watch when my Beretta was taken away. When he finally died, I got myself a Geo Prism – a Chevy with a Toyota engine. This car took me to Orlando twice a day in many cases. I went to college, my friend’s apartment, the club, everywhere. I even remember the first day I got it and taking it to Downtown Orlando thinking the lights weren’t on bright (because my Beretta just did stuff, without a hitch you know?) It was almost totalled when an elderly lady pulled out in front of me on US1, one morning on the way to class. It even got broken into once (I do not miss being downtown.) Sadly, after I started work as a full-time teacher, the signs were there that my Geo was on his last legs, er, wheels. Mind you, the A/C always worked and the paint was a mess from the Florida sun, but he was still running.

I looked online, and for under $10k, was a 2003, green-silver Toyota Corolla on sale at the local Nissan dealership. I went down, drove it, and bought it. Nothing fancy at all. No power windows, no alarm, no sports pack. In fact, I resented the stupid car because despite it being a Toyota with the same, cute headlights, it wasn’t my Prism and I still drove that little clunker around until he was finally taken away as well. I had both of them parked in front of my apartment for a while too. But I learned to love him, and I called him Yoda (as in Toy-Yoda.) The Corolla did me very, very well so I’m an avid Toyota fan. It survived a side-swiping and the back seat full of crap that I put in there (I always brought everything in my car.) I even picked Steve up from the airport on his first visit to America in my Corolla. But when I moved, I had to have my folks sell my little Yoda for $4k. He had the side scraped up, and the check engine light going, but he was still going strong after having him for 8 years.
So now that I’ve been carless for 2 years and four months, I’m trying to figure out which should be my first, British car. I’ll discuss what I’ve considered, and the research I’ve found on each one in my next post.
Read part two of my car journey here: My first UK car–which should I choose?

Posted in All About Me, Review, Shopping, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The bus station and the crazies who lurk inside

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

It’s nice to sit here this morning and listen to the bird’s singing out my window. It seems like Spring is upon us, but it’s still way cold and it snowed a bit yesterday morning. Wonder how Florida is today…

Yesterday I had a bit of a situation. First, I travelled to the local JobCentre to sign up a new claim. I’m sure I’m not eligible for compensation, but I wanted to see if there was anything they could do for me to try and find full time work somewhere. I was interested to see the types of people who were among the unemployed ranks: everyone. Seriously. All sorts of people where in there. People as young as 18, people much older, and people my age.

It’s not a pleasant place to be, obviously, but I honestly don’t know how any large amount of people can be living off of the system. You have to produce 10 job posts that you’ve applied for, and check in every two weeks. I’m suspecting that most of these people are like me; applying over and over and getting nothing back from the employers. (At least some of them interview me and/or send a nice note letting me know I wasn’t chosen for the role.)

After I went to the JobCentre, got my groceries, even allowed a lady and her granddaughter to use the pay-toilet after me so she didn’t have to shell out 20p, I had my encounter.

I was sitting on the bench in the bus station, waiting for Steve to call me. There was some big, loud, ginger dude talking to some lady and her kid about a phone to my left. I wasn’t paying much attention except I could hear the woman yelling, “Stop it”!” to the (presumably) the kid, as the guy continued loudly blahblahblahing. I’ve seen my share of loud, obnoxious people in town because, heck, they’re going to be everywhere you go. I didn’t think much else about it, until the lady and her kid walked off and the drunk dude came up to me, an inch from my face, blathering about something.

Now, since I live by the age-old practice of “Don’t acknowledge and don’t make eye contact,” so potential crazies will leave me alone, I did just that. But when he got closer to me, slurring about how he wanted to use my phone, and he’s give me a quid (no money visible, of course.) I was like, “What? No.” Seriously. Are you kidding me? Then he got pissed off. “But I need to call my effing neighbour!” I just kept telling him, “No. Absolutely not. No,” and putting my hand up for him to back off. He then proceeded to shout and call me all sorts of names (some of which I don’t know the meaning of) and he went on, ranging and raving through the bus station about what an effing blankety-blank I was.

I may be, dude. But I ain’t stupid.

That was enough to shake me up a bit, so I tried to find a security person of some description, but finally settled on going into the ticket agent’s and telling her about the incident so she could alert security. Steve called and I grabbed the next bus so I could get the heck out of Dodge.

Steve wanted to make sure that I reported the incident to the police, so I called the non-emergency number and let her know some crazed, drunken man was trying to get cell phones off of people. My concern was people with little kids or elderly people (though I’ve seen some of them in town who will push and shove to get on the bus or through a store, so I doubt they’d be very intimidated.) When I talked to the police, the dispatcher told me that I should have called 999 right then and there to let them know. I told them it wasn’t anything I needed to make a statement about, but the police still wanted to come over and talk to me.

About an hour later I had a nice policewoman in my kitchen discussing the woes of people with drug and alcohol problems in public, as well as the phone theft concern. She told me she had a friend in London who grabbed a phone out of her hand while she was sitting on the bus. (Remind me never to live there, would you?) I told her about the situations I’d seen at the schools in Florida with kids blatantly stealing phones from other students and even teachers. Heck, when I worked at the NASA contractor, one of my friends had her phone stolen off her desk. When we were at O2 over the weekend, we saw that an iPhone can cost up to £719 out-right. Good thing I only have a Windows phone, but still.

In Orlando, it was illegal for people to be visibly drunk in public and cops were everywhere, waiting to nab someone. Here, according to the policewoman, it’s illegal for anyone to shout obscenities like that in public. (Can you imagine how many people in Florida would be arrested if that were the case there?) The logic is, children may hear this, or elderly people would be intimated (heck, it intimidated me) by the rude, loud, bullying type of behaviour. The policewoman thought that these kinds of incidences would be more prevalent here. I told her Americans have less shame about being rude to people; plus they may or may not have a weapon.

Moral of the story is: sit around other people, not alone on a bench where no one can see craziness take place. Be aware of your surroundings. Stay away from loud, potentially drugged/drunk/mentally disturbed people.

And drive a car because the bus station can get creepy.

Posted in All About Me, Employment, Shopping, Technology, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Social networking–life’s necessary evil

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

I love blogging. I’ve done it since the word weblog was created for news-only sites, until we all decided to make journals out of the capability. I like to write. I like creating content. I like technology too, but I’m starting to really fall behind and I sort of don’t care.

I was asking about book promotions online the other day, because it’s long been discussed that Twitter should not be for spam. Still people do it – a lot. My Twitter feed has gotten to the point where most of it is just links and little discussion. But people will still say they never, ever read or buy books based on a writer’s promotion on Twitter. The alternatives suggested, when I posed the question, were Tumblr and Goodreads.

Tumblr may be the place to be, but after updating my Pick Books page, I didn’t see a lot of original work there. If you’re an artist, fine. If you make animated GIFs, fine. But, just like Pinterest, reblogging and repinning content doesn’t take much effort, so there isn’t much life in the posts. Granted, I like the funny ones like Dog Shaming, but I don’t need to look on Tumblr for anything. (Pinterest still doesn’t interest me either. Someone on my FB credited Pinterest for her cute, colored dish of devilled eggs for Easter. Yeah, I don’t have any use for that in my life.) If people are making book trailers, I totally get that. I get the book promos too, but aren’t they going to get lost in the mix of funny Doctor Who and Harry Potter photos? (I like them to an extent, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not a fan or anything.) If they were photos I took with my own camera, I would be fine with uploading and sharing them. I had that idea when I started No Intent to Buy and my Foodie Blog. Other than that, it’s not that compelling of a situation to invest time in.

Goodreads is a reasonable book promotion tool even though Amazon has bought them and it’s such a big deal now. (I solved the dilemma personally – it has an app to update my book progress, therefore I keep my Goodreads account.) I understand how easily it would be to offer book giveaways and contests, but I can’t be the only person who ignores them. I get invites for those all the time and I never participate. I would think Twitter would be a less intrusive way to offer book giveaways – I’ve participated in contests from links there and I hear that plenty of people have legitimately won free books.

Aside from these sites, I’ve talked before about how Facebook has lost its heart and soul too. In the past few weeks I’ve demoted friends’ posts to allow “only important” updates show up. I’m tired of the cutesy motivational photos, the awful, blurry photos of people at bars, and the insipid updates every five minutes about their daily activities (that’s what Twitter is for, ya’ll.)

Still, I am a bigger fan of FB than Twitter because people I actually know let me know what’s going on in their lives. I don’t love it either since all people seem to be able to do is mindlessly share things there too (though I did post a funny punctuation joke yesterday.) I don’t mind chatting to strangers online but I don’t base my life around it. I just don’t feel the need to do that. When I worked full time I was glad to have the focus outside of the technology spectrum, so I didn’t have to feel obligated or bored enough to just habitually check or update Twitter. I know I’m in the minority on this, and I do not begrudge anyone who enjoys it. It’s all in how you use it, and for me, it’s something I can just take it or leave. Now that Lost is over, I don’t feel as enthusiastic about the discussions. (Besides, the discussions are very limited for me personally, from what I’ve found.)

Lastly, I set my LinkedIn profile to private today. I got an invite to connect with a girl I use to be friends with, who was full of idiotic gossip and drama that I put behind me years ago. I’ve blocked them from FB, and email, yet since LinkedIn can’t block specific users, they can still see my current address and work-related information. No. I just can’t abide by that, especially when I know the reason for the invite was just to be nosey rather than a good-natured outreach of rekindling a friendship. I know the idea of LinkedIn is to keep contacts with former work-mates in order to find job positions, but if someone whom I specifically don’t want knowing my business, can, then it’s not worth bothering with having my resume up for public viewing. It really creeped me out when I realized that this girl and her group of numbskulls have been snooping around on my online profile. (I’m honestly surprised she could figure out how to create a LinkedIn account in the first place.)

Anyway, needless to say, I’m finding social networking less and less interesting. Everywhere I look, I hear people raving about Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, but I’ve just never been in love with any of it. Well, at least Megan Fox is on my side.

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So this is middle age?

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

I couldn’t think of a better title for this post, and I don’t even think this post will be very long. My back has gotten worse now that I’ve been home for over a week with pain. I went for a walk around town on Saturday, and I’ve taken my driving lessons, but somewhere along the line, I did something to make it worse. Steve thinks maybe I rushed the healing process too much (as I like to do with everything – I’m so impatient!) I was thinking that my one hour of practicing my parking and reverse around the corner manoeuvres in the car on Monday caused me to do a lot more twisting and turning than my poor back was ready for.

Anyway, I’m sitting here in the bed where I’m sort of comfortable. It takes me an age to get up though. I can’t sit anywhere for long, which is really irritating. I at least worked on my WIP more than usual yesterday, but the minute that I moved slightly in my little, yellow IKEA chair, I felt that familiar twinge of tightness in my back all over again.

I actually finished reading The Future of Us though, so maybe I can get into another book while I’m sitting around here helpless. I would blog more and write my review of the book, but, again, doing anything for long just ain’t happening.

I guess I’ve graduated to middle age, although I know plenty of people at all ages who hose up their back like this. Now I understand how awful this junk is and I don’t wish it on anyone.

On a bright note, I got a knock on the door from the Postman this morning. I didn’t even bother trying to get up because he would have been long gone by the time I got downstairs anyway. He left me a note saying I can pick up a letter that required my signature. I wonder if this is my Indefinite Leave to Remain biometric ID card I’ve been waiting for. I hope so.

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It just keeps getting better

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Suzanne Schultz Pick

I swear, I can’t make this stuff up. I was scheduled to work at a Primary School as a support teacher for this week and next. As I was waiting, I was asked to work as an office assistant. I was willing to give it a whirl, until I found out that it was £7 an hour. I made that amount when I worked at the grocery store in 1996. I know jobs are scarce but luckily I don’t need one that badly.

Instead, I agreed to go in and teach at a school for Thursday morning. I am so glad I did. The school was big, and nice, and the staff was really friendly. No one was shouting at kids in the hallway. None of the kids were being complete jerks either. It really made me re-evaluate the whole, “You have to be mean,” attitude of teaching. I had a really enjoyable time, and even got to observe a student teacher. That really made me think that maybe, somehow, some day, I’d like to work as an English teacher again.

I thought I was going to get my chance when the teaching agency called me to do a mini-lesson and have a chat with the staff at a really nice school on Friday. They were looking for 2 English teachers to start on Monday, and there were going to be 4 of us interviewing. I was encouraged and excited, because I was dreading going to the Primary School when I didn’t know exactly what I was going to be asked to do.

When I got to this interview, however, the Head of English didn’t even introduce himself or speak to me longer than to say that he was going to let the other two candidates (two men) do their mini-lesson first. I waited in the staff room while I had copies for my lesson made. When another teacher (I think – no one talked to me there) came and got me, she led me to a Year 7 class where I did a creative writing lesson. The Head of English stayed a good 10-15 minutes, then talked to the classroom teacher before leaving. When I was finished the classroom teacher led me back to the staff room where the other maybe teacher told me that the other candidates had left (except one lady who still had to do her mini-lesson) and they’d “be in touch.” No chat, no real interview. I thought I had a chance but, surprise, surprise, I wasn’t selected for either of the 2 jobs.

In the meantime, my back had been aching from sitting in the chair too long a while ago when I bought my Katy Perry Sweet Treats add-on for Sims 3. I’ve never had a backache, but when I got to the Primary School on Monday I was in full-blown spasm attack. I couldn’t sit comfortably, and after an hour and a half of being there, I was convinced I was going to have to leave early. I couldn’t walk or sit. I was grabbing on to the Xerox machine, the desks, the doorjamb, etc. just to move around. Instead of calling a taxi (or an ambulance, as I really thought at one point when I was stuck and panicked in the bathroom), I stayed until the end of the day. I let the Year 1 and the Reception teachers know that usually I would sit at the desks with the kids and be much more useful, but I was in a bad way.

This morning, Steve decided to stay home with me because I couldn’t even roll over in bed. I let the teaching agency know at 6AM that I couldn’t come in today but I was more than willing to come in the rest of the week. Tonight they called and told me that the school decided to keep another lady they sent in to replace me today. Surprise, surprise.

Granted I may go back again later, but even if I don’t, I can’t be worried about these kinds of things. It’s nothing I can help, and I can just keep trying to find something. I was bored just sitting around feeling uncomfortable, but maybe if I’m not sent off anywhere else tomorrow (if I’m even able to do it, that is) I can get back to my work in progress. As I always say, that’s the important work I want to do, the rest is just to have some kind of decent money, enjoyment in the things I like, and contentment in a place to go and be useful each day.

I guess I can do that while sitting at a cafe with my netbook and my Kindle, huh? Too bad no one’s paying me for that yet.

Posted in All About Me, Employment, School, Teaching, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment