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Friday, February 24, 2006 

Bad Influences...

Just as Ashley is a bad influence on NiniJudy, Jon Pratt of Peter Pratt’s Inn is a bad influence on my. When we first moved into a suite of rooms above his restaurant he told me that my CRT monitor was too old, too heavy and used too much energy. By the end of that week I had a new, sleek, energy efficient, thin, light monitor. You know, the ones that look like they came off of a laptop.
Last week he started talking to me about a van that he purchased off of eBay. It was a 1 ton, diesel, V8 cargo van that was used by Iron Mountain for document pickup and delivery. He said he got it at a steal for only $8,999 and that I should look for one also because he saw a few of them listed. Apparently they just came off of leases at the end of last year. Anyway, I took a look since I needed another vehicle and I found a few. One was in California, one in Texas and one in Missouri. I was communicating with the people in California when they got an offer that they accepted. The end of the auction for the van in Missouri was coming up quickly so I put a low bid the van. My bid was too low but I kept an eye on the auction. At 9:29 on Tuesday night, just 1 minute before the auction ended, I entered my maximum bid of just over $10K. At 9:30 I was the winner with a bid of $8,550. On Wednesday morning I wired the funds to the seller and arranged for delivery. They had a guy who charges 65 cents per mile plus gas and tolls to deliver cars. Today at 12:15 my van arrived. It is in very good shape and seems to be worth the money. Now I just have to drive it down to good old Virginia to get it registered.
More about my other purchases later…