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10:36 am - Thu 4/25/02 (Watching "Meet The Press") My strong tendency over the years, when considering the "Mideast situation", has been to be sympathetic with the Israelis. It hasn't been based on informed opinion, by and large--It's part media-bias (That's the slant I've gotten), part natural sympathy for the Jewish people--but it's there. When I actually try to THINK my way through the situation, I immediately get lost in the complexities of it. I don't even understand where it all STARTS. I mean, I know that Israel was formed after WWII and the Holocaust, but I'm pretty unclear on the legal/moral rational that allowed a group to come in and claim land that was occupied by another people (But I GUESS the argument on the other side is that there WASN'T really "another people", not in the sense of an actual, formal COUNTRY. I also wonder, and I'm VERY vague on this, if part of the justification was a historical/Biblical mandate--"You might be here NOW, but we were here FIRST, and God's given us permission to come BACK"). FRI 4/19/02 5:27 pm (Offline) Have spent a good chunk of the day dealing with the "hangover" from my last journal entry... I really need to grow a sense of PERSPECTIVE here, and maybe "get over myself" a little bit; This is just a little skit, and lives do NOT hang in the balance over the outcome. Not even mine. Wed 4/24/02 9:30 pm (Offline) I'm doing this offline because I called Greg-The-Car-Guy a short time ago, and am hoping he will return my call tonite, so I can arrange to bring in a car for him to look at tomorrow morning. The 87 Toyota Camry for $1550 has morphed into a 1990 Toyota Corolla for $2400; I called the number for the Camry a couple times, but couldn't catch the guy at home, and then I saw the Corolla, just down the block from me, and assumed it was fate. (END) Last night after work, I met Victor and Maria, the owners of the Corolla. I found myself strangely reticient to do any of the things one should do when checking out a car; They offered to let me drive it, but it was dark, and I just said, "Well, I'll be driving it tomorrow when I take it to the mechanic, so that's okay". Then they asked if I wanted to look under the hood, and I laughed and said, "I wouldn't know what I was looking at anyway. That's why I have to take it to a mechanic". But the body looked good (Except for a scrape on one side that never got repainted), and the interior is very nice. They say they haven't had any problems with it, that they just need a bigger car because they have a second child on the way (Rightly or wrongely, I felt encouraged by their being a couple; This has been a "family car", and not something some kid has used and abused and driven into the ground. Victor also works at a car place, apparently, so that would seem to indicate the car has probably been well cared-for). In about ten minutes, I'm supposed to meet up with Maria, to go to Greg-The-Car-Guy's place, which is about a mile-and-a-half from here. I'm expecting a good report--I have a good feeling about this couple (I don't think they're trying to pull anything over on me), and they weren't resistant at all to the idea of me having the car checked out--so I'm sort of thinking I have a new car. I feel the urge to say "Yay!". And at the same time, I also feel the urge to say "Yikes!". I really hadn't planned on doing this, but I ended up asking Jane if I could borrow the money to buy the car from her and Mark (My only other option that I can see would be to do the credit card "cash advance" thing. And I know that's a very pricey proposition, and with what I'm making right now, it would be very hard for me to get out-from-under that debt, in addition to the start-up costs I'm going to incur. It's a lot to ask of them (An "interest free loan" that I don't know whenI'll be able to pay off in full). And I'm not comfortable with doing it, but they're the closest thing I have to family here on earth, so who else am I going to ask? But more on all this later. Right now, I have to go meet Maria. Wish me luck...
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