A beautiful day

It's good, when you come to a fork in the road, to have a clear idea of which path to take.


4/29/06 Saturday
Cherie had to work half a day this morning so she’s gone. I’m not going anywhere this morning so she took the car instead of me dropping her off. I am running fair this morning, about a six on the Bob scale. It is a beautiful day, 48 degrees this morning with a high of 68 expected. I want to enjoy this cool weather while I can cause there won’t be to much of that in Texas. When Cherie comes home I think I will encourage her to go to the park. There I will use up the last roll of film in her camera. The trees are in bloom everywhere and I want to make sure I capture it. I hope I get the digital back from Kodak soon. There’s going to be allot of pictures when we get the film developed folks so be prepared.
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That went well. Greg from Ed Schmidt called me at 10:30 or so this morning. “I think I’ve figured out some options for you. Can you and Fred come in today?” he said. I called Fred and he had to get ready so we agreed to leave at 11:30. I didn’t know what to expect but when we got there we were warmly greeted by Greg. Fred told me several times “You do the talking Bob, you decide for me, I’ll do what you say, you know what’s best’. This again makes me uncomfortable but I realize the truth is he must rely on me.

I found Fred a seat cause he needed to sit down. I looked at Gregg and asked him “What have you got for us?” explaining that I was to check everything out and then advise Fred. Gregg told me that he had a nice car picked out and they would get Fred’s Cadillac loan paid off and could do it for about $269.00 a month. That was right in line with what we had talked about Friday when I told Gregg Fred could afford maybe one hundred dollars more a month.

Gregg had JD, the salesman who originally sold Fred the Caddy, come over and help us. “Just wait here and I’ll have them bring the car up” Greg said as he handed JD to us. The car is a 2001 Buick LeSabre. It looked pretty sharp and is a little bigger than the Cadillac. I took it for a test drive, looked under the hood and in the trunk. It’s a nice car though it doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as the Caddy. That works for me as I haven’t figured out how to use all the bells and whistles on the Caddy after driving it for five months. The car manual was like an encyclopedia. Hey, if it starts, stops, and the radio works that’s fine with me.

I took the car for a test drive and it is nice. I am surprised at the get up and go of the V-6 engine in that larger car and the gas mileage was comparable to the Caddy. The brakes are sound, the tranny shifts smoothly, I can’t find anything wrong though I did hear a small rattle when I had the door open. “How much do they want for this car?” I asked JD. He didn’t know what price Gregg was giving it to us for so he checked his sheet. “It says here that we’re asking $15,900 for it” JD said when he found it.

Getting back JD went to get Gregg after hearing me tell him I liked the car. We sat and waited for quite a while. I took Fred out to the Buick to let him see it and explained that I thought it was a good car. “Fred, it three years newer and it won’t cost an arm and a leg to keep it running, besides it’ll get out of that Cadillac” I told him. Fred liked the car and poked through it a bit. “What’s this stuff?” he asked, jabbing his finger at some elastic webbing that is part of the trunk restraining thingamajig. I explained it to him and he asked “What do you think? Should I get it?”. “Fred it looks like a good deal but I need to hear the bottom line figures before I decide” I said and we went back in and waited.

Greg stopped by to see how things were progressing. I talked with him for a bit and was pretty satisfied so agreed to proceed. JD came and did the paperwork needed to start the financing stuff so we could nail down the figures. That took quite a while. I went and got Fred a cup of coffee and talked with him as we waited. Gregg stopped in again so check on things and when he heard we were still waiting on the paperwork hustled off to motivate things.

We were ushered into the finance manager’s office. His name is Mark. Come to find out Fred knew Mark’s parent’s, grandparent’s, and a bunch more people. Mark was crunching the numbers and talking to the finance company trying to make things work. Gregg was there till he got paged to take care of something. He’s the head of the whole dealership there in Maumee so his personal attention to Fred’s plight showed his concern. Good to see.

Poor Mark was having to work to get this down to a payment in the range that had been stipulated. He had to scurry out and get prices adjusted to work. That means he had to reduce the price of the car or how much of the Cadillac they were eating. He came to an answer and began to explain what he had. I translated things in a language Fred could understand. Once Mark said he would explain something by drawing it out. I could tell he lost Fred at the first use of a word like “Amorization” so explained things to him later.

Now comes the point I must take back everything I said about Ed Schmidt. These guys bit the bullet to make things right. They dropped four grand off the price of the Buick and ate four grand on the Caddy, which isn’t worth snot without a motor. Fred does have to pay about four thousand of the Cadillac’s note but they transferred it to the loan on the Buick. So what it boils down to is Fred no longer has to pay the $8,000 he owed on the Caddy, that’s cleared, and is buying the Buick at it’s original asking price. He is happy and I feel like I did something. We will let time be the judge of that.. I looked at Mark and told him how much we appreciated how things were taken care of. I told him and later Greg as we walked out that they had redeemed themselves. I told Mark about the blog and he got the usual thumbnail I give about the miracle of my life and the restoration of my marriage. He said he would read this so Hi Mark, Y’all done good. I can recommend you now so if my readers in England, Australia, or all the other places that stumble on this blog want to buy a Chevy they’ll get on a plane and come here. That’s how much weight my recommendation carries. …NO, I’m not delusional, I really think this. It’s true. You just wait and see!

Cherie was happy to see me home. I took her to pick up her car where I had to leave it at the dealership in order to drive Fred and his new car home. Then we went to the park and walked till our legs were tired. I took the whole roll of film like I knew I would. I’ve missed so much of the forest waking up. Everything is springing up fast with that bright green of new growth interspersed with the wilted red fall like leaves that were hit by the freeze a couple of days ago. Tons of bright flowering trees were all about. Most of the petals on the tree on the parking lot side of our building are gone. It was cool to see them falling when the wind would blow gently. There would be a puff of breeze followed by a shower of white petals falling like big fluffy snow flakes in a winter squall. I loved it. The ground was covered almost solidly in white flower petals. That would have made a good picture. Hope they get the digital camera back soon.

We saw some of our deer feeding in the woods. Didn’t get to be as close as at other times but still got to watch. The water was clear and low. The low lying areas are finally drying up. Cherie is still depressed and talked to me about it. I think I will have to start another journal that won’t be published because writing is one of the ways I think things out. There’s just things I can’t talk about here because of the problems people make out of it. Little bitter people are sad people who have little joy left in their life. They often blame others for their misery failing to see it is their own creation.

Life is good because we choose it to be and make decisions to keep it so. Fred was commenting on how he noticed that I plan ahead. I don’t know if I learned that from founding and leading my companies of from before that but it is true. I’m more concerned about where we will be twenty years from now than tomorrow. My body is beat up, my brain is damaged, and I am getting older like we all do. I don’t know how long these broken bones will hold up and I understand that my multiple brain injuries greatly increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease so I will prepare for those possibilities. I also know that staying active both physically and mentally will lengthen my days of life with quality.

Well folks it’s getting late. Cherie has long since gone to bed and I’ve been working on these meandering thoughts. It is 11:23. It has been a good day that I feel positive about. Do Good, Be Good. (Sounds like some kinda Vulcan greeting) See ya tomorrow.