Maxi-cosi rodifix booster car seat review

Thinking of purchasing a 2018 v90 r design with 40k miles. It’s a 1 owner, with all service records for 35k. Clean CARFAX, and had a prepurchase inspection done that I paid for show no concerns with it. Am I missing anything? Is this a bad buy? Love the v90 look l, but it would be my first Volvo and have heard mixed reviews. Two kids in car seats.

Not too long ago I asked about A4 reliability because mechanic I visited to fix up my current car talked a whole lot of smack about the reliability of A4's. This community helped me a lot so I got over that fear of buying one and I'm sticking to it! Thanks to everyone who took the time to talk about their experiences and help me.
Now that I'm set on an A4 B9 Quattro Sedan, I'm looking for tips about different trim levels, engine options, some extras that I should have on the car I will eventually get, stuff I need to check/ask from the owner for receipts about etc.
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Engine options - There are a lot of options, at first I thought they only come with either 2.0 Diesel or 2.0 Petrol, however, the vast majority of replies said that 3.0 is much more reliable than 2.0 when it comes to Audis. I managed to find 3.0 engine options on the marketplace(not a single YT review mentioned they come in 3.0 engine options so I'm a little confused). There's two options:
3.0 160kw(215hp) Diesel and 3.0 200kw(268hp) Diesel
Read somewhere it's pretty much the same engine just slightly modded or something and someone mentioned, that they have different gearboxes, but I'm not sure exactly. Which one is the better option?
Mileage - Obviously lower mileage is better, but at what point should I stay away? Lowest mileage options is 70,000km(44,000 miles), next best is twice as much - 140,000km(87,000 miles) and worst mileage on my shortlist is pretty much 200,000km or 125,000 miles. People mentioned buying cars with 7k miles or 15k miles on them, nobody mentioned buying options with more mileage.
Trim levels and extras - I know there's like 3 trim level options(I think I know at least), however there's more extras that you can get separately, so what exactly should I be looking for to get? Not many 3.0 engine options have a sunroof for example, something I noticed. Currently those are the things I'd like:
Keyless - I think think it's on every single A4 B9 Android Auto - From my research it should also be available on all of them Sunroof - Not a must, but I never had a car with sunroof, so why not Steering wheel - I want the one that's like cut off from the bottom, not many have it though 360 parking camera - I think some only have parking sensors, that would be a no no Seats - Some cars have Alcantara seats I noticed, that would be sick, but also not a must S-Line - People recommending S-line, not sure exactly what changes other than sportier look and suspension, but I'd pick S line over non S line Virtual Cockpit - Is it just a gimmick? Is it actually useful? Looks nice, so kind of want this as well.
Nothing else currently comes to mind atm, if there's any extras that I MUST look for to have the best experience with the car, please let me know!
There's a good amount of A4 B9's on 3.0 engines for sale, however there's only 2 Sedans, there's two more on 2.0 petrol engines, however I'm currently looking at the 3.0 options:
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Option 1 (One I currently like the most) Initial reg. 10/2016 Engine: 3.0 V6 TDI 160kW, diesel Mileage: 73,000km or 45,000 miles Color: Matador Red Listed Price: 25,800 EUR or a little over 27,000 dollars
Likes: S-Line, beautiful color, tinted windows, 3 zone climate, 360 parking camera, Virtual Cockpit, lower mileage
Dislikes: Normal steering wheel(not flat bottom, no S-line markings for whatever reason as well), Seats seem to be the lowest trim level, no sunroof
Option 2
Initial reg. 02/2017 Engine: 3.0 V6 TDI 160kW, diesel Mileage: 145,000km or 90,000 miles Color: Brown-ish/Gray-ish Listed Price: 24,500 EUR or a little over 26,275 dollars
Likes: Alcantara seats and interior, Virtual Cockpit, 3 zone climate,s line, tad bit lower price. Dislikes: No parking camera, higher mileage, boring color, I checked its history, last change of ownership was on 20.04.2023, which is less than 2 months ago, I find it weird.
There's a decent amount of touring A4's and even though I prefer a sedan, I will consider touring if it's perfect in terms of looks and trim options. However those two I mentioned are the only sedans, red one is a big big favorite for me.
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Thanks a lot for reading and taking your time to help me on my purchase decision!

I'm getting really irritated with Uber. The pay is taking a nose dive and the customer service is contradicting themselves and the passengers have been getting more frustrating. I have been driving for only two months with about two hundred five-star reviews. In the last week, I've received three one-star reviews. The last one gave me a one-star because there was pet hair in my car. I have a pet but my dog hasn't been in my car in the two months I've been driving. A previous passenger had pet hair on them and tracked it in my car. It even doesn't matter because I am a pet-friendly Uber and people are allowed to take their dogs in my car, even if I haven't had anyone bring their pet in my car yet. I almost canceled because of her "stellar vibes" but instead I finished the ride and gave her a one-star, too. She may have been new to Uber but I've taken Ubers where the car was completely trashed and I still gave them a five-star review and a tip. I can't really be expected to stop and clean my car between rides. When I tried to explain it to her, she said my seat was covered with pet hair. When I do vacuum my car, I usually don't prioritize my own seat because it's my seat and, as a pet owner, I just accept that my clothes constantly have pet hair on them. Anyways, I'm currently getting approved for Lyft this very moment.

We are set to land in KEF next week at 6:30am and have reserved a vehicle with Blue Car rental, a booster seat, and their 4G WiFi.
My question is: is the 4G wifi set-up intuitive to set up on my own if I did contactless pick-up? Or would it be best to connect with a Blue Car representative at the service desk?
We have reservations at the Blue Lagoon at 9am and would hate to miss it being held up in a long line at the rental car desk!

I've shared fiction here before and it didn't go altogether too poorly, so I'm going to press my luck and do it again. This was written about a year ago, and I'm tired of trying to peddle it to lit magazines. Might as well share it here, know that it met a few eyeballs, and have done with it.
It's relevant to the sub insofar as it's about urban alienation and the working conditions at a small business run by IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE people. (I tried to pitch it as a story of the great resignation with a momentary flicker of cosmic horror.) It's based on a similar job I took on after getting laid off during the lockdown, and the circumstances of the main character's breakup are faintly similar to one I went through several years back (her job sucked the life out of her).
Without further ado:
* * *
It was getting close to midnight, and the temperature outside was still above 80 degrees. We’d locked up the shop at 10:15 and walked over to Twenty, the dive bar on Poplar Street, where a single wall-mounted air conditioner and four wobbly ceiling fans weren’t putting up much resistance against the July heat baking the place from the outside and the dense mass of bodies giving it a stifling fever from within.
Just now I came close to saying it was a Wednesday night, because that was usually when the cyclists descended upon Avenue Brew, the gritty-but-bougie craft beer and sandwich shop I was working at back then. Every Wednesday between March and November, about fifteen to twenty-five Gen Xers dressed in skintight polyester, all packages and camel toes and fanny packs, locked up their thousand-dollar bikes on the sidewalk and lined up for IPAs and paninis. They reliably arrived around 8:00, an hour before we closed, making it impossible to get started on the closing checklist and leave on time at 10:00. The worst of them were demanding and rude, and even the best got raucous and stubborn after a couple drinks. There were nights when bringing in the sidewalk tables couldn’t be done without arguing with them. Most were sub-par tippers, to boot.
After Wednesday came and went that week without so much as a single 40-something in Ray Bans and padded shorts stopping in to double-fist two cans of Jai Alai, we dared to hope the cyclists had chosen another spot to be their finish line from there on out. But no—they’d only postponed their weekly ride, and swarmed us on Friday night instead.
I was the last person to find out; I was clocked in as purchaser that evening. The position was something like a promotion I'd received a year earlier: for twenty hours a week, I got to retreat from the public and sit in the back room with the store laptop, reviewing sales and inventory, answering emails from brewery reps, and ordering beer, beverages, and assorted paper goods. When I put in hours as purchaser, my wage went up from $11 to $15 an hour, but I was removed from the tip pool. On most days, tips amounted to an extra two or three dollars an hour, so I usually came out ahead.
This was back in 2021. I don't know what Avenue Brew pays these days.
Anyway, at about 8:15, I stepped out to say goodbye to everyone and found the shop in chaos. Friday nights were generally pretty active, the cyclists' arrival had turned the place into a mob scene. The line extended to the front door. The phone was ringing. The Grubhub tablet dinged like an alarm clock without a snooze button. Danny was on the sandwich line and on the verge of losing his temper. Oliver was working up a sweat running food, bussing tables, and replenishing ingredients from the walk-in. The unflappable Marina was on register, and even she seemed like she was about to snap at somebody.
What else could I do? I stayed until closing to answer the phone, process Grubhub orders, hop on and off the second register, and help Danny with sandwich prep. After the tills were counted out, I stayed another hour to take care of the dishes, since nobody had a chance to do a first load. Oliver was grateful, even though he grumbled about having to make some calls and rearrange Sunday's schedule so I could come in a couple hours late. Irene and Jeremy, Avenue Brew's owners, would kick his ass if he let me go into overtime.
Danny suggested that we deserved a few drinks ourselves after managing to get through the shift without killing anyone. Not even Marina could find a reason to disagree with him.
The neighborhood had undergone enough gentrification to support an upscale brunch spot, an ice cream parlor, a gourmet burger restaurant, a coffee and bahn mi shop, and Avenue Brew (to name a few examples), but not yet quite enough that the people who staffed them couldn’t afford to live within a ten-minute walk from the main avenue where all these hep eateries stood between 24-hour corner stores with slot machines in back, late-night Chinese and Mexico-Italian takeout joints with bulletproof glass at the counters, and long-shuttered delis and shoe stores. Twenty on Poplar was the watering hole set aside for people like us. It was dim, a bit dilapidated, and inexpensive, and usually avoided by denizens of the condos popping up on the vacant lots and replacing clusters of abandoned row houses.
When we arrived, Kyle waved us over. He didn’t work at Avenue Brew anymore, but still kept up with a few of us. He was at Twenty at least four nights out of the week.
So there we all were. I sat with a brooding stranger freestyling to himself in a low mumble on the stool to my left and Oliver on my right, who tapped at his phone and nursed a bottle of Twisted Tea. To Oliver’s right sat Marina, staring at nothing in particular and trying to ignore Danny, who stood behind her, closer than she would have liked, listening to Kyle explain the crucial differences between the Invincible comic book and the Invincible web series.
I recall being startled back to something like wakefulness when it seemed to me that the ceiling had sprouted a new fan. I blinked my eyes, and it wasn’t there anymore. It reminded me of an incident from when I was still living with my folks in South Jersey and still had a car, and was driving home from a friend’s house party up in Bergen County. It was 6:30 AM, I hadn’t slept all night, and needed to get home so I could get at least little shuteye before heading to Whole Foods for my 11:00 AM shift. I imagined I passed beneath the shadows of overpasses I knew weren’t there, and realized I was dreaming at the wheel.
I was pretty thoroughly zombified at that point. Heather and I had broken up for good the night before, and I hadn't gotten even a minute of sleep. Calling out at Avenue Brew was tough. Unless you found someone willing to cover your shift on like six hours' notice, you were liable to get a writeup, a demotion, or your hours cut if you couldn't produce a doctor's note. So I loaded up on caffeine pills and Five-Hour Energy bottles at the corner store, and powered through as best I could.
I finished the last thimbleful of Blue Moon in my glass. Oliver wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with a napkin and covered his mouth to stifle a laugh at the KiwiFarms thread he was scrolling through. Pool balls clacked; somebody swore and somebody laughed. The TouchTunes box was playing Bob Dylan’s “Rain Day Woman #12 & 35,” and enough bleary 40-something men around the bar were bobbing their heads and mouthing the words to make it impossible to determine which one of them paid two bucks to hear it. A guy by the cigarette machine who looked like a caricature of Art Carney in flannel and an old Pixies T-shirt was accosting a woman who must have been a toddler when he hit drinking age, and she momentarily made eye contact with me as she scanned the area for a way out. Danny was shouting over the bartender’s head, carrying on a conversation with the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, who was sitting on the horseshoe’s opposite arm.
I never got his name, but when Oliver first referred to him as the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, I knew exactly who he meant. Philly scene kid par excellence. Mid-20s, washed-out black denim, dyed black hair, thick bangs, and dark, gentle eyes. He was only truly alluring when he was on the job, because he seldom smiled then—and when he smiled, he broke the spell by exposing his teeth, stained a gnarly shade of mahogany from too much smoking and not enough brushing.
“How’s Best? Marcus still a joker?” Danny asked him.
“Yeah, you know Marcus. You know how he is.”
So the Hot Guy had been working at Best Burger (directly across the street from Avenue Brew) ever since Pizza Stan’s owners mismanaged the place unto insolvency. (Afterwards it was renovated and reopened as a vegan bakery—which incidentally closed down about a month ago.) Danny used to work at Best Burger, but that ended after he got into a shouting match with the owner. I happened to overhear it while I was dragging in the tables and collecting the chairs from the sidewalk the night it happened. It wasn’t any of my business, and I tried not to pay attention, but they were really tearing into each other. A month later, Oliver welcomed Danny aboard at Avenue Brew. I hadn’t known he’d been interviewed, and by then it was too late to mention the incident. But I’d have been a hypocrite to call it a red flag after the way I resigned from my position as Café Chakra's assistant manager two years earlier—not that we need to go dredging that up right now. Let's say there was some bad blood and leave it at that.
Anyway, I was thinking about giving in and buying a pack of cigarettes from the machine—and then remembered that Twenty didn’t have a cigarette machine. I looked again. The Art Carney-lookalike was still there, fingering his phone with a frown, but the girl was gone—and so was the cigarette machine.
I had only a moment to puzzle over this before Danny clapped me on the shoulder and thrust a shot glass in front of me.
“Starfish!” he said. (Danny called me Starfish. Everybody else called me Pat.) “You look like you need some juice.”
He distributed shots to everyone else. Marina declined hers, but changed her mind when Kyle offered to take it instead.
She and Kyle had stopped sleeping together after Kyle left Avenue Brew to work at the Victory taproom on the Parkway, but Marina was still concerned about his bad habits, which Danny delighted in encouraging.
We all leaned in to clink our glasses. Before I could find an appropriate moment to ask Marina if I could bum a cigarette, she got up to visit the bathroom. Danny took her seat and bowed his head for a conspiratorial word with Kyle.
I watched from the corner of my eye and tried to listen in. Like Marina, I was a little worried about Kyle. He got hired at Avenue Brew around the same time I did, just before the pandemic temporarily turned us into a takeout joint. He was a senior at Drexel then, an English major, and sometimes talked about wanting to either find work in publishing or carve out a career as a freelance writer after graduating. But first he intended to spend a year getting some life in before submitting himself to the forever grind.
He read a lot of Charles Bukowski and Hunter Thompson. He relished the gritty and sordid, and had already been good at sniffing it out around the neighborhood and in West Philly before Danny introduced him to cocaine, casinos, strip clubs, and a rogue’s gallery of shady but fascinating people. (None were really Danny’s friends; just fellow passengers who intersected with the part of his life where he sometimes went to Parx, sometimes came out ahead, sometimes spent his winnings on coke, and sometimes did bumps at titty bars.) Kyle recounted these adventures with a boyish enthusiasm for the naked reality of sleaze, like a middle schooler telling his locker room buddies about catching his older brother in flagrante and seeing so-and-so body parts doing such-and-such things.
Marina hated it. She never said as much to me, but she was afraid that the template Kyle set for his life during his “year off” was in danger of becoming locked in. The anniversary of his graduation had already passed, and now here he was trying to convince Danny to contribute a couple hundred dollars toward a sheet of acid his guy had for sale. He wasn't doing much writing lately.
I was the oldest employee at Avenue Brew (as I write this I’m 37, but fortunately I don’t look it), and when Kyle still worked with us I felt like it was my prerogative to give him some advice. The longer he waited to make inroads, I once told him, the more likely he’d be seen as damaged goods by the publishing world. He needed to jam his foot in the door while he was still young.
I could tell the conversation bored him, and didn’t bring up the subject again.
The bartender took my glass and curtly asked if I’d like another drink.
“No thanks, not yet,” I answered.
She slid me my bill.
I missed the old bartender, the one she’d replaced. I forget her name, but she was ingenuous and energetic and sweet. Pretty much everyone had some sort of crush on her. Sometimes she came into Avenue Brew for lunch, and tipped us as well as we tipped her. Maybe three months before that night—Danny witnessed it—she suddenly started crying and rushed out the door. Everyone at the bar mutely looked to each other for an explanation. (Fortunately for Twenty, the kitchen manager hadn’t left yet, and picked up the rest of her shift.)
She never came back. None of us had seen her since. But drafts still had to be poured and bottlecaps pulled off, and now here was another white woman in her mid-twenties wearing a black tank top, a pushup bra, and a scrunchie, same as before. Twenty’s regulars grew accustomed to not expecting to see the person she’d replaced, and life went on.
“How’re you doing?” I asked Oliver, just to say something to somebody, and to keep my thoughts from wandering back to Heather.
“Just kind of existing right now,” he answered. His phone lay face-up on the counter. He was swiping through Instagram, and I recognized the avatar of the user whose album he hate-browsed.
“And how’s Austin been?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. Not even three weeks after getting over the jetlag from his trip back from the Cascades, he’s off touring Ireland.” He shook his head. “Living his best life.”
He’d hired Austin on a part-time basis in September. We needed a new associate when Emma was promoted to replace a supervisor who'd quit without even giving his two weeks. There was a whole thing. I'm having a hard time recalling the guy's name, but I liked him well enough. He was a good worker and he seemed like a bright kid, but he was—well, he was young. Naïve. One day he found Jeremy sitting in the back room with his laptop, and took advantage of the open-door policy to ask why the store manager and supervisors didn’t get health benefits or paid time off. Jeremy told him it "was being worked on," and that he couldn’t discuss it any further at that time. I understand the kid got argumentative, though I never knew precisely what was said.
Irene started visiting the shop a lot more often after that, almost always arriving when the kid was working. No matter what he was doing, she’d find a reason to intervene, to micromanage and harangue him, and effectively make his job impossible. A coincidence, surely.
It’s something I still think about. By any metric, Jeremy and Irene have done very well for themselves. They’re both a little over 40 years old. I remember hearing they met at law school. In addition to Avenue Brew, they own a bistro in Francisville and an ice cream parlor in Point Breeze. They have a house on the Blue Line, send their son to a Montessori school, and pull up to their businesses in a white Volkswagen ID.4. But whenever the subject of benefits, wages, or even free shift meals came up, they pled poverty. It simply couldn’t be done. But they liked to remind us about all they did to make Avenue Brew a fun place to work, like let the staff pick the music and allow Oliver and me to conduct a beer tasting once a day. They stuck Black Lives Matter, Believe Women, and Progress flag decals on the front door and windows, and I remember Irene wearing a Black Trans Lives Matter shirt once or twice when covering a supervisor's shift. None of the college students or recent graduates who composed most of Avenue Brew's staff could say the bosses weren't on the right team. And yet...
I'm sorry—I was talking about Austin. He was maybe 30 and already had another job, a “real” job, some sort of remote gig lucrative enough for him to make rent on a studio in the picturesque Episcopal church down the street that had been converted into upscale apartments some years back. Austin wasn’t looking for extra cash. He wanted to socialize. To have something to do and people to talk to in the outside world. He wanted to make friends, and all of us could appreciate that—but it’s hard to be fond of a coworker who irredeemably sucks at his job. Austin never acted with any urgency, was inattentive to detail, and even after repeated interventions from Oliver and the supervisors, he continued to perform basic tasks in bafflingly inefficient ways. Having Austin on your shift meant carrying his slack, and everyone was fed up after a few months. Oliver sat him down, told him he was on thin ice, and gave him a list of the areas in which he needed to improve if he didn’t want to be let go.
When Austin gave Oliver the indignant “I don’t need this job” speech, it was different from those times Danny or I told a boss to go to hell and walked out. Austin truly didn’t need it. He basically said the job was beneath him, and so was Oliver.
It got deep under Oliver’s skin. He did need the job and had to take it seriously, even when it meant being the dipshit manager chewing out a man four or five years his senior. He earned $18 an hour (plus tips when he wasn’t doing admin work), had debts to pay off, and couldn't expect to get any help from his family.
The important thing, though, the part I distinctly remember, was that Oliver was looking at a video of a wading bird Austin had recorded. An egret, maybe. White feathers, long black legs, pointy black beak. Austin must have been standing on a ledge above a creek, because he had an overhead view of the bird as it stood in the water, slowly and deliberately stretching and retracting its neck, eyeing the wriggling little shadows below. As far as the fish could know, they were swimming around a pair of reeds growing out of the silt. The predator from which they extended was of a world beyond their understanding and out of their reach.
The video ended. Oliver moved on to the next item: a photograph of the bird from the same perspective, with a fish clamped in its beak. Water droplets flung from the victim's thrashing tail caught the sunlight. And I remember now, I clearly remember, the shapes of like twelve other fish stupidly milling about the bird's feet, unperturbed and unpanicked.
Danny peered at Oliver’s phone and observed a resemblance between the bird—its shape and bearing, and the composition of the photograph—and a POV porn video shot from behind and above, and he told us so. Elaborately. He made squawking noises.
“And mom says I’m a degenerate,” Oliver sighed. “Can you practice your interspecies pickup artist shit somewhere else?” Oliver flicked his wrist, shooing Danny off, and held his phone in front of his face to signal that he was done talking.
Danny sagged a little on his stool and turned away. I sometimes felt bad for him. For all his faults, he had the heart of a puppy dog. He really did think of us as his tribe. There was nobody else who’d only ever answer “yes” when you asked him to pick up a shift, and he did it completely out of loyalty.
He was turning 29 in a week. I wondered how many people would actually turn out to celebrate with him at the Black Taxi. Kyle probably would—but even he regarded Danny more as a source of vulgar entertainment than a friend.
Then it happened again. When I turned to speak to Oliver, there’d been a pair of pool cues leaning side-by-side against the wall a few stools down. Now they were gone.
This time it might have been my imagination. Somebody passing by could have casually snatched them up and kept walking.
But a moment later I seemed to notice a second TouchTunes box protruding from the wall directly behind me. I let it be.
Marina returned from the bathroom. Danny rose and offered her back her seat with an exaggerated bow. Before she got settled, I asked if she’d like to step outside with me. She withdrew her pack of Marlboro Menthols from her canvas bag, which she left sitting on the stool to deter Danny from sitting back down.
Marina never minded letting me bum cigarettes from time to time. I couldn’t buy them for myself anymore; it’s a habit I could never keep under control, and was only getting more expensive. Like everything else in the world. About once a month I reimbursed her by buying her a pack.
The air out on the sidewalk was as hot as the air inside Twenty, but easier to breathe. After lighting up, Marina leaned against the bricks and sighed.
“I wish Oliver would fire Danny already and get it over with.”
I nodded. Marina rarely talked about anything but work.
“He sneaks drinks and doesn't think anyone notices he's buzzed,” she went on. “He steals so much shit and isn’t even a little subtle about it. He’s going to get Oliver in trouble. And he’s a creep.”
“Yeah,” I said. These were her usual complaints about Danny, and they were all true. “At least he’s better than Austin.”
“That’s a low bar.”
Three dirt bikes and an ATV roared down the lonely street, charging through stop sign after stop sign, putting our talk on hold.
“Remind me. You’ve got one semester left, right?” I asked after the noise ebbed.
“Yep.”
Marina was a marketing major at Temple. She’d had an internship during the spring semester, and her boss told her to give her a call the very minute she graduated. Her parents in central Pennsylvania couldn’t pay her rent or tuition for her, so she was a full-time student and a full-time employee at Avenue Brew. Her emotional spectrum ranged from "tired" to "over it." She’d been waiting tables and working at coffee shops since she was seventeen, had no intention of continuing for even a day longer than she had to, and feared the escape hatch would slam shut if she dallied too long after prying it open.
She’d considered majoring in English, like Kyle. She went for marketing instead. I couldn’t blame her.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve been kind of off all day.”
“I’m terrible.”
“Why?”
I gave dodgy answers, but she asked precisely the right follow-up questions to get me going about what happened with Heather the night before.
It was the new job. Before the pandemic, Heather worked as a server at a Center City bar and grill. (That's where I met her; we were coworkers for about a year, and then I left to work Café Chakra because it was quieter and closer to where I lived.) When the place closed its doors and laid everyone off during the lockdown, she got a stopgap job at the Acme on Passyunk, and hated it. Then in March, she found a bar-and-lounge gig in a ritzy hotel on Broad Street. Very corporate. Excellent pay, great benefits. Definitely a step up. But her new employers made Irene and Jeremy look like Bob and Linda Belcher by comparison. It was the kind of place where someone had recently gotten herself fired for leaving work to rush to the hospital after getting the news that her grandmother was about to be taken off life support, and not finding someone to come in and cover the last two hours of her shift.
Heather seldom worked fewer than fifty-five hours a week, and her schedule was even more erratic than mine. At least once a week she left the hotel at 1:00 or 2:00 AM and returned at 9:00 the next morning. Neither of us could remember the last time she’d had two consecutive days off, and it had been over a month since one of mine overlapped with one of hers. She’d spent it drinking alone at home. All she wanted was some privacy.
I’d biked to South Philly to meet her when she got home at 1:30. The argument that killed our relationship for good began around 2:30, when I complained that we never had sex anymore. Heather accused me of only caring about that, when she was so exhausted and stressed that her hair was falling out in the shower. Quit the job? She couldn’t quit. The money was too good. She had student loans, medical bills, and credit card debt, and for the first time in her life she could imagine paying it all off before hitting menopause.
So, yeah, I was cranky about our sex life being dead in the water. Say whatever you like. But at that point, what were we to each other? We did nothing together anymore but complain about work before one or both of us fell asleep. That isn’t a relationship.
She said my hair always smelled like sandwiches, even after bathing, and she was done pretending it didn’t turn her off. I told her she was one to talk—she always reeked of liquor. As things escalated, we stopped caring if her roommates heard us. “You want to be a father?” she shouted around 4:00 AM. “Making what you make? That poor fucking kid.”
We fought until sunrise, and I left her apartment with the understanding that I wouldn’t be coming back, wouldn’t be calling her ever again. I biked home and sat on the steps facing the cement panel that was my house’s backyard. After my phone died and I couldn’t anaesthetize myself with dumb YouTube videos or make myself feel crazy staring at the download button for the Tinder app, I watched the sparrows hopping on and off the utility lines for a while.
At 11:40 I went inside. One of my roommates was already in the shower, so the best I could do was put on a clean Avenue Brew T-shirt before walking to the shop and clocking in at noon to help deal with the lunch rush.
“That’s a lot,” Marina finally said. “Sorry.”
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say. She was sixteen years my junior, after all, and just a coworker. She didn’t need to hear any of this, and I definitely didn't need to be telling her. But who else was there to tell?
She’d already finished her cigarette. I still had a few puffs left. She went inside.
I decided to call it a night.
The second TouchTunes box was gone—naturally. Danny had taken my stool, and regarded my approach with a puckish you snooze you lose grin. I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d just pay my bill, give everyone a nod goodnight, and walk the five blocks back home.
And then Danny disappeared.
One second, he was there. The next—gone.
Danny didn’t just instantaneously vanish. Even when something happens in the blink of an eye, you can still put together something of a sequence. I saw him—I seemed to see him—falling into himself, collapsing to a point, and then to nothing.
You know how sometimes a sound is altogether inaudible unless you’re looking at the source—like when you don’t realize somebody’s whispering at you, and can then hear and understand them after they get your attention? I think that was the case here. I wouldn't have known to listen if I hadn't seen it happen. What I heard lingered for two, maybe three seconds, and wasn't any louder than a fly buzzing inside a lampshade. A tiny and impossibly distant scream, pitchshifted like a receding ambulance siren into a basso drone...
I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. I’m certain I remember a flash of red, and I have the idea of Danny’s trunk expanding, opening up as it imploded. A crimson flower, flecked white, with spooling pink stalks—and Danny’s wide-eyed face above it, drawn twisting and shrinking into its petals.
For an instant, Twenty’s interior shimmered. Not shimmered, exactly—glitched would be a better word. If you’re old enough to remember the fragmented graphics that sometimes flashed onscreen when you turned on the Nintendo without blowing on the cartridge, you’ll have an idea of what I mean. It happened much too fast, and there was too much of it to absorb. The one clear impression I could parse was the mirage of a cash register flickering upside-down above the pool table.
Not a cash register. The shape was familiar, but the texture was wrong. I think it was ribbed, sort of like a maggot. I think it glistened. Like—camo doesn’t work anymore when the wearer stops crouching behind a bush and breaks into a run. Do you get what I’m saying?
Nobody else seemed to notice. The pool balls clacked. A New Order track was playing on the TouchTunes box. A nearby argument about about Nick Sirianni continued unabated.
Finally, there was a downward rush of air—and this at least elicited a reaction from the bartender, who slapped my bill to keep it from sailing off the counter.
“Danny,” I said.
“Danny?” Kyle asked me quietly. His face had gone pale.
“Danny?” Oliver repeated in a faraway voice.
After a pause, Kyle blinked a few times. “You heard from him?”
“God forbid,” said Marina. “When he quit I was like, great, I can keep working here after all.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Kyle. Did I ever show you those texts he sent me once at three in the morning?” The color had returned to Oliver’s face.
“No, what did he say?”
Oliver tapped at his phone and turned the screen toward Kyle.
“Oh. Oh, jeez.”
“Right? Like—if you want to ask me something, ask me. You know? Don’t be weirdly accusatory about it…”
I pulled a wad of fives and ones from my pocket, threw it all onto the counter, and beelined for the exit without consideration for the people I squeezed through and shoved past on the way.
I heard Marina saying “let him go.”
I went a second consecutive night without sleep. Fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to come in the next day.
The schedule. It’s funny. Oliver was generally great at his job, and even when he wasn’t, I cut him a lot of slack because I knew Irene and Jeremy never gave him a moment’s peace. But I could never forgive him those times he waited until the weekend to make up and distribute the schedule. This was one of those weeks he didn’t get around to it until Saturday afternoon. When I found it in my inbox, Danny’s name wasn’t anywhere on it.
As far as I know, nobody who hadn’t been at Twenty that night asked what happened to him. We were a bit overstaffed as it was, and everyone probably assumed Danny was slated for the chopping block. The part-timers were, for the most part, happy to get a few additional hours.
Oliver abruptly quit around Labor Day after a final acrimonious clash with the owners. I never found out the details, and I never saw him again. Jeremy and Irene took turns minding the store while a replacement manager was sought. None of the supervisors would be pressured into taking the job; they knew from Oliver what they could expect.
About three weeks after Oliver left, I came in for my purchasing shift and found Jeremy waiting for me in the back room. I knew it was serious when he didn’t greet me with the awkward fist-bump he ordinarily required of his male employees.
“You’ve seen the numbers,” he said. Business for the summer had fallen short of expectations, it was true, and he and Irene had decided to rein in payroll expenses. My purchaser position was being eliminated. Its responsibilities would be redistributed among the supervisors and the new manager, when one was found. In the meantime, I'd be going back to the regular $11 an hour (plus tips of course) associate position full-time.
Jeremy assured me I'd be first in the running for supervisor the next time there was an opening.
I told him it was fine, I was done, and if he’d expected the courtesy of two weeks’ notice, he shouldn’t have blindsided me like that.
“Well, that’s your choice,” he answered, trying not to look pleased. His payroll problem was solving itself.
I racked up credit card debt for a few months. Applied for entry-level museum jobs that might appreciate my art history degree. Aimed for some purchasing and administrative assistant gigs, and just for the hell of it, turned in a resume for a facilitator position at an after-school art program. Got a few interviews. All of them eventually told me they’d decided to go in a different direction. I finally got hired to bartend at Hops from Underground, a microbrewery on Fairmount.
I’m still there. The money’s okay, but it fluctuates. Hours are reasonable. I’m on their high-deductible health plan. There’s a coworker I’ve been dating. Sort of dating. You know how it goes. In this line of work you get so used to people coming and going that you learn not to get too attached. I walk past Avenue Brew a few times a week, but stopped peering in through the window when I didn't recognize the people behind the counter anymore.

Now that the GH is on Toyota’s site I’m trying to build. Two requirements I have are 2nd row bench and roof rails with cross bars.
Do all trims come with roof rails and x bars? I think so but am not for certain.
Do all trims come with 2nd row bench as an option?
When building on the site higher trims like Limited or Platinum show no packages. Not sure what that means. Does it mean they only come one way (ie. 2nd row captains chairs only)?
Edited: This is a great article by JD Power that has a simpler way to look at the trim levels.. Good stuff here for anyone looking at one. It answers my question on 2nd row:
“For second-row seating, the base XLE trim comes with a standard 60/40 split-folding bench that slides fore and aft, reclines, and has a flip-down center armrest with a pair of cupholders. Limited and Platinum trims get individually adjustable captain's chairs that slide and recline, plus a small center console with two removable cupholders for enhanced through-the-vehicle access to the third-row seat.”
Thanks!

WHAT INITIALLY OCCURRED:
As stated in the title, I had a normal ride just as I always have for years and got hit with an email awhile after with a receipt for an $80.00 charge for 'damages.' The driver submitted 2 images of what looks like apple sauce or puke or something and that was apparently enough to convince Lyft to steal from me.
I've never had any issues with drivers and I'm always quiet and clean. I had nothing with me that could have caused such damage, I don't drink, and I wasn't sick. I was taking a Lyft home from work, same as always. In point of fact, I'm very particular and careful about how I exit and enter my Lyft rides, ensuring I don't close the door too hard, open it into the sidewalk, scrape my shoe against the doorjam, etc. I check the seats and cupholder and footrest areas for crumbs and trash just in case and often end up removing trash other people have left. There is absolutely no way in hell I somehow left a mess of beige goo on the door handle (as shown in the driver-supplied 'evidence') when I took extra care to ensure it was all proper before I left.
ON THE ISSUES OF EVIDENCE: The driver had nothing to tie me to the supposed mess besides the timing of the ride and the report. There was zero evidence I had done anything wrong. I didn't even have anything with me that could have possibly cause the damage. There wasn't even a shred of evidence linking my existence to the fake mess this driver created. What the fuck. SOME OTHER WEIRD SHIT:
When I was in the car, the driver didn't speak to me once. When I left I said thank you, have a good day, as I always do, and again, the driver didn't speak to me at all and started driving away immediately. I found this odd because generally drivers sit in the spot they parked for a minute or so, I assume to start their next ride on the app or whatever. Rarely does my driver go from a fully parked standstill to tearing down the street so quickly. At the time I just presumed they were in a hurry, but in hindsight I realise now they were hurrying to fake the damage quickly, before Lyft's system determined they were reporting it 'too late.' This was premeditated.
THIS ISN'T A SINGULAR ISSUE:
After realising the issue I did the first thing you'd expect: I went to contact Lyft customer service. Unfortunately, their customer service sucks. The phone number they have doesn't actually link you to anything, so you have to contact them in their website or email. The website opens tickets which take you to email, so it's basically all handled by Zendesk email support.
I don't know if they're being managed by robots or if their employees are given strict scripts but they basically didn't do anything. They didn't respond to what I said in the ticket and gave me a copypaste answer of corporate 'sorry not sorry' speak: Per our Terms of Service, we charge a damage fee to help drivers repair and clean affected areas of their vehicle, once drivers provide evidence.
We re-opened your case and after extensive review of the information provided by both you and the driver, no adjustments will be made to this claim.
That's all well and good except, there was no information provided by me, and there wasn't any evidence from the driver either. The driver submitted 2 pictures and a damage reimbursement request. The 'information' from me was just opening a ticket asking to discuss. I couldn't get escalated past this so I simply opened another ticket and got the exact same response. This is when I gave up and went looking for help on Reddit. I'd not made an account before but I do search for people who have the same problems as me to find their solutions.
A quick and cursory search for similar cases yielded an astonishing number of results. This is a consistent issue plaguing rideshare sites and it's just being left to fester. The solution given in the other Reddit posts I found were basically 'just dispute it with your bank - odds are they'll cave to the dispute since it's a small amount and you'll get blacklisted off the platform, but it's better than just being scammed.'
HOW I PROCEEDED, AND HOW WELL THAT WENT:
So that's what I did. I filed a dispute (by the way, Bank of America is garbage for disputing. They give you like 140 characters to describe everything and that's barely enough to begin explaining your case.) and got temporary credit while BoA contacted Lyft. Just today the claim was finally closed without any real submissions from me or Lyft.
The full PDF outlines my ride history as evidence on Lyft's side, showing how I take the same rides each day. I presume this is to paint a picture of how I always take these same rides, therefore I was likely in the ride that was damaged. However, it does nothing to address whether the damage was even real, let alone created by me. This seems to be ignored by BoA and Lyft. I was allowed to submit my own description of the incident but it was another 100 characters to talk in and 3 slots to upload images. Naturally it's hard to upload images that actually help my case, since I don't take pictures of everyone's cars like a creep. But hey, maybe that's the only way to solve these issues going forward eh?
GOING FORWARD / LEGAL QUESTIONS: I understand Lyft has policies on this ability to reimburse drivers for damages incurred during rides. However, in reality this is an ability to simply take money from you over baseless claims from the drivers. So, legal question #1: How is it even legal for such a broken and predator-enabling system to exist?
This entire system is predicated upon the concept of 'guilty until proven innocent.' The only real barrier for a driver stealing from you is a couple of pictures of a mess they could have made themselves. There is nothing you can do but try to prove you didn't do it. I found a few rare cases in which the metadata from the images showed they were taken from 6 year old blogs and such, or the passenger had pictures of their own to prove their claim. These were the only situations I could find in which Lyft actually refunded the forced damage fee.
That's fucking bullshit. It makes no sense. I need to rant, I'm sorry, but what the fuck? You can literally just steal 80 bucks from someone and it'll all look legit in the system. That might not seem like much to some, but even if it's not, on a large scale app like Lyft it's insane how much money is stolen with impunity.
So, legal question #2: How do people find justice in situations like this, where it costs them more money to sue for the bullshit than they were damaged for? After all, the damager is still getting away with the damaging, and can continuously do so on a large scale if left unchecked. And legal question #3, I know class action lawsuits exist, but how does one join them? There doesn't seem to be an easy way to file claims or join existing ones, that I can find anyway. Legal question #4, how does the financial aspect of setting up class action suits like this play into your ability to do so? That is to say, is there a breakpoint where it costs 'too much,' or it's a gamble? And lastly legal question #5, do I have a case here? Because I did everything else and nothing is working. I'm still down 80 bucks because some dipshit decided he wanted to swindle someone. And yet, I do understand laws can be weird about interacting with the TOS of companies, and this may be technically legal. In which case...what the fuck.
NARRATIVE CONCLUSION/TL;DR: Some random ass stole 80 bucks from me, and Lyft facilitated it. When I told them it was bs they ignored me. When I told my bank not to let them steal my money I was once again screwed over. This isn't a one time problem and happens with other people all the time and the drivers get away with it because there's no real blowback. Wtf do I do?

Hey all,
So ironically, I bought the CX30 because I thought it would help me with visibility since I am short and it is lifted but still comfortable enough to feel like driving a car rather than a big vehicle. I test drove the car too and love the car overall. It's just that I'm kind of realizing slight issues with visibility that makes me nervous.
For one, just a month after owning it, the car got badly scraped by a gas station bollard that was sticking out at an angle when I was driving. Unfortunately, there was no way for me to see it and it was a full service station, so I didn't get out of the car and realize that it was so close. It was my fault ofc and I've kept in mind how to potentially avoid that, but it was also devestating as I never had that happen with cars (I've mostly driven sedans, but have driven vans here and there).
I've started driving it again now that its fixed and realized that the front pillar is chunkier than I realized. I had to do a double take to see from the passenger's side. I also realize that I probably still will need some kind of booster (like a pillow) to help me with visibility. Kind of bummed because I bought it thinking that it being lifted will give me greater visibility without being as intimidating as a full-fledged SUV. I love the smoothness of the drive otherwise, the camera and blind spot indicators are a gamechanger since I haven't had those in previous cars. I live mostly in NYC (though I haven't brought it to the city yet-kept it with family few hours away) and see the CX-30 everywhere in the city so I feel like it's a good city car and pretty popular, The reviews and the safety really sold me versus a subaru crosstrek (which I was thinking otherwise) and because I'm a single person, I figured cx-30 was more practical than CX-5. Kind of not sure. Would love to hear thoughts.

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Today I went to pick up my car, which has been at the dealership for a month. I sat with the customer service manager in his office (a conjoined desk next to another conjoined desk and a side office), and waited for my parents (who helped pay for the service) to send paperwork.
I had my backpack, and since it was the end of the day, I put it in an empty seat next to me.
When the paperwork was sent, he told me to follow him to the front office to get checked out. I went to grab my backpack, but he said that I didn’t have to; that it would only take a few minutes and we’d be right back. I was hesitant, but said ok. At this point, there were no customers in the back of the office, just a few customer service managers and other employees (all of whom were ready to go home).
The checkout process ended up taking longer than was anticipated, because my parents’ card had issues. The manager I’d been working with eventually said he was going back to the office (where my backpack was) to “take care of some things” — likely whatever it was he needed to do before the dealership closed.
I ended up waiting to be checked out for about 20 minutes. That whole time, I had this gnawing paranoia about my backpack being snooped through because I’d left it unattended.
(Also, as a side note, I could tell that the consensus among the employees was that I was a “daddy’s money” person — which isn’t even the truth — and I could feel the glares they hid under customer service smiles/voices.)
Anyway, I finished, went back to my backpack, and left.
The reason I am so worried is that I had 2 journals in my backpack, each of which contains very personal entries. Even though everyone there seemed “professional,” and were undoubtedly just thinking about going home, I feel so stupid for leaving the backpack unattended.
My only solace are the facts that 1) when I later opened my backpack, I saw that the journals had been in the same (particular) position I had put them in, and 2) there were cameras pointed directly at my where my backpack was.
I looked up the dealership on Google, and they have a lot of 1 star reviews (despite being rated 4.5+ stars overall), although most of the bad reviews were about bad customer service and gouged prices.
So, what do you guys think? Should I call them to see if I can review the security camera?

Today I went to pick up my car, which has been at the dealership for a month. I sat with the customer service manager in his office (a conjoined desk next to another conjoined desk and a side office), and waited for my parents (who helped pay for the service) to send paperwork.
I had my backpack, and since it was the end of the day, I put it in an empty seat next to me.
When the paperwork was sent, he told me to follow him to the front office to get checked out. I went to grab my backpack, but he said that I didn’t have to; that it would only take a few minutes and we’d be right back. I was hesitant, but said ok. At this point, there were no customers in the back of the office, just a few customer service managers and other employees (all of whom were ready to go home).
The checkout process ended up taking longer than was anticipated, because my parents’ card had issues. The manager I’d been working with eventually said he was going back to the office (where my backpack was) to “take care of some things” — likely whatever it was he needed to do before the dealership closed.
I ended up waiting to be checked out for about 20 minutes. That whole time, I had this gnawing paranoia about my backpack being snooped through because I’d left it unattended.
(Also, as a side note, I could tell that the consensus among the employees was that I was a “daddy’s money” person — which isn’t even the truth — and I could feel the glares they hid under customer service smiles/voices.)
Anyway, I finished, went back to my backpack, and left.
The reason I am so worried is that I had 2 journals in my backpack, each of which contains very personal entries. Even though everyone there seemed “professional,” and were undoubtedly just thinking about going home, I feel so stupid for leaving the backpack unattended.
My only solace are the facts that 1) when I later opened my backpack, I saw that the journals had been in the same (particular) position I had put them in, and 2) there were cameras pointed directly at my where my backpack was.
I looked up the dealership on Google, and they have a lot of 1 star reviews (despite being rated 4.5+ stars overall), although most of the bad reviews were about bad customer service and gouged prices.
So, what do you guys think? Should I call them to see if I can review the security camera?

Today I went to pick up my car, which has been at the dealership for a month. I sat with the customer service manager in his office (a conjoined desk next to another conjoined desk and a side office), and waited for my parents (who helped pay for the service) to send paperwork.
I had my backpack, and since it was the end of the day, I put it in an empty seat next to me.
When the paperwork was sent, he told me to follow him to the front office to get checked out. I went to grab my backpack, but he said that I didn’t have to; that it would only take a few minutes and we’d be right back. I was hesitant, but said ok. At this point, there were no customers in the back of the office, just a few customer service managers and other employees (all of whom were ready to go home).
The checkout process ended up taking longer than was anticipated, because my parents’ card had issues. The manager I’d been working with eventually said he was going back to the office (where my backpack was) to “take care of some things” — likely whatever it was he needed to do before the dealership closed.
I ended up waiting to be checked out for about 20 minutes. That whole time, I had this gnawing paranoia about my backpack being snooped through because I’d left it unattended.
(Also, as a side note, I could tell that the consensus among the employees was that I was a “daddy’s money” person — which isn’t even the truth — and I could feel the glares they hid under customer service smiles/voices.)
Anyway, I finished, went back to my backpack, and left.
The reason I am so worried is that I had 2 journals in my backpack, each of which contains very personal entries. Even though everyone there seemed “professional,” and were undoubtedly just thinking about going home, I feel so stupid for leaving the backpack unattended.
My only solace are the facts that 1) when I later opened my backpack, I saw that the journals had been in the same (particular) position I had put them in, and 2) there were cameras pointed directly at my where my backpack was.
I looked up the dealership on Google, and they have a lot of 1 star reviews (despite being rated 4.5+ stars overall), although most of the bad reviews were about bad customer service and gouged prices.
So, what do you guys think? Should I call them to see if I can review the security camera?

Today I went to pick up my car, which has been at the dealership for a month. I sat with the customer service manager in his office (a conjoined desk next to another conjoined desk and a side office), and waited for my parents (who helped pay for the service) to send paperwork.
I had my backpack, and since it was the end of the day, I put it in an empty seat next to me.
When the paperwork was sent, he told me to follow him to the front office to get checked out. I went to grab my backpack, but he said that I didn’t have to; that it would only take a few minutes and we’d be right back. I was hesitant, but said ok. At this point, there were no customers in the back of the office, just a few customer service managers and other employees (all of whom were ready to go home).
The checkout process ended up taking longer than was anticipated, because my parents’ card had issues. The manager I’d been working with eventually said he was going back to the office (where my backpack was) to “take care of some things” — likely whatever it was he needed to do before the dealership closed.
I ended up waiting to be checked out for about 20 minutes. That whole time, I had this gnawing paranoia about my backpack being snooped through because I’d left it unattended.
(Also, as a side note, I could tell that the consensus among the employees was that I was a “daddy’s money” person — which isn’t even the truth — and I could feel the glares they hid under customer service smiles/voices.)
Anyway, I finished, went back to my backpack, and left.
The reason I am so worried is that I had 2 journals in my backpack, each of which contains very personal entries. Even though everyone there seemed “professional,” and were undoubtedly just thinking about going home, I feel so stupid for leaving the backpack unattended.
My only solace are the facts that 1) when I later opened my backpack, I saw that the journals had been in the same (particular) position I had put them in, and 2) there were cameras pointed directly at my where my backpack was.
I looked up the dealership on Google, and they have a lot of 1 star reviews (despite being rated 4.5+ stars overall), although most of the bad reviews were about bad customer service and gouged prices.
So, what do you guys think? Should I call them to see if I can review the security camera?

Today I went to pick up my car, which has been at the dealership for a month. I sat with the customer service manager in his office (a conjoined desk next to another conjoined desk and a side office), and waited for my parents (who helped pay for the service) to send paperwork.
I had my backpack, and since it was the end of the day, I put it in an empty seat next to me.
When the paperwork was sent, he told me to follow him to the front office to get checked out. I went to grab my backpack, but he said that I didn’t have to; that it would only take a few minutes and we’d be right back. I was hesitant, but said ok. At this point, there were no customers in the back of the office, just a few customer service managers and other employees (all of whom were ready to go home).
The checkout process ended up taking longer than was anticipated, because my parents’ card had issues. The manager I’d been working with eventually said he was going back to the office (where my backpack was) to “take care of some things” — likely whatever it was he needed to do before the dealership closed.
I ended up waiting to be checked out for about 20 minutes. That whole time, I had this gnawing paranoia about my backpack being snooped through because I’d left it unattended.
(Also, as a side note, I could tell that the consensus among the employees was that I was a “daddy’s money” person — which isn’t even the truth — and I could feel the glares they hid under customer service smiles/voices.)
Anyway, I finished, went back to my backpack, and left.
The reason I am so worried is that I had 2 journals in my backpack, each of which contains very personal entries. Even though everyone there seemed “professional,” and were undoubtedly just thinking about going home, I feel so stupid for leaving the backpack unattended.
My only solace are the facts that 1) when I later opened my backpack, I saw that the journals had been in the same (particular) position I had put them in, and 2) there were cameras pointed directly at my where my backpack was.
I looked up the dealership on Google, and they have a lot of 1 star reviews (despite being rated 4.5+ stars overall), although most of the bad reviews were about bad customer service and gouged prices.
So, what do you guys think? Should I call them to see if I can review the security camera?

I want to invest in something good quality for regular use things but get so overwhelmed by the number of choices, especially as a FTM with like zero baby knowledge/experience. We went to look at strollers/car seats at bbb before they close, and I felt so overwhelmed I wanted to cry. Are there reliable sites to look for safety ratings and reviews of baby items? I feel like it’s so hard to trust online reviews anymore, bc so many of them are just paid by the products they’re reviewing. I got some recommendations from friends, but idk. Like lots of people seem to love the doona, but when I saw it the baby seems SO far away. I didn’t like it.
What methods and strategies are ya’ll using to choose these things? I’m a classic anxious/ indecisive over researcher normally when it comes to purchases over like $50, so that’s been way worse with pregnancy and I’m just shutting down bc of information overload. -.-

We are a family of four currently (wife and I, and a 9 and 5 year old) with a Kia Forte LX. With a new baby coming in December, the Kia is not going to work with an infant carseat, combination seat, and booster seat.
Looking for an SUV that:
- Is less than $30k (ok with a 3-5 year old accident-free car with less than 50k miles)
- As good gas mileage as we can expect given I know we're upgrading from a sedan to an SUV.
- Good reliability and inexpensive repairs
Would prefer Kia, Hyundai, Honda, Toyota, Subaru, Nissan

Greetings! I hope you enjoy this new tale I've spun up! Trying a different POV this time around. Let me know what you think.
Next
Markus gazed once more at the package. It was tubular in shape, about ten inches in length, and rattled slightly when he shook it. There was no return address, and the delivery label was obviously hand-written in a gorgeous calligraphic font. Someone definitely took their time and care in creating this.
However, he didn’t recall ordering anything, nor did he have any friends or family with a looming marriage, so this arrival warranted some concern. It smelled somewhat of a campfire, but was otherwise a normal, nondescript cardboard tube with plastic caps.
As he inhaled the scent surrounding the tube, his mind was cast back to the few camping trips he had taken with his father, and of the many blóts he had performed with his old Kindred before they disbanded. Good memories, all. With a smile on his face, he gently uncapped the tube and emptied the contents out into his heavy palm.
As he had been expecting a letter, he wasn’t disappointed. What was interesting was the fact that said letter was made of honest-to-goodness vellum. A rolled piece of vellum, kept tight by a heavy signet ring.
Markus took the vellum to the kitchen table, and gently slid the ring off of it, laying it down, ignored for now.
Whomever had sent this to him had some serious skills. He was looking at what appeared to be an illuminated invitation. The handwriting was as exquisite as the lettering on the delivery label, and was a veritable joy to read.
Dearest Markus,
I am cordially inviting you to tea.
Please meet me at Kitcho Arashiyama – Kyoto, Japan.
Enclosed, please find your ticket to Japan.
I expect to see you there in three month’s time, at four PM local time on February 14th, 2023.
Yours,
Lucifer
Markus sat the letter down beside the seal, dumbfounded. Lucifer? Either someone was attempting to draw him into another LARP, or they must have sent the message to the wrong guy. Curious, he inspected the ring.
It was a heavy ring, with a curious, angular symbol embossed on it, surrounded by an almost hypnotic pattern of lines. The same symbol was also on either side of the ring. Smirking, he took a snapshot of it with his phone and did an image search.
It was, indeed, the sigil of Lucifer. Someone must have gone to some expense for this. Remembering that the message had said something about a plane ticket, Markus snatched up the tube and shook it some more. Out floated a second item. Picking it up off the floor, Markus saw that it looked curiously like a ticket of some sort. Round-trip from Louisville to Kyoto, open-ended. Nonstop, first class. Holy shit.
In disbelief, Markus checked the ticket online. It was booked through Quantas, and was, indeed, legitimate. Sitting back in the chair, he realized that he would be going to Japan in three months.
Three months was hardly enough time to get his passport in order. Still, if someone spent this much on a flight for him, he owed it to them to do his utmost to be there on time, and at his best.
The next day, he called in to work and went to a post office in Louisville to apply for a passport. Figuring the expense would be worth it, he went ahead and got it expedited. No sense in it arriving the day after his flight. This way, he would have it around the third week of January, leaving him enough time to not panic about having everything ready.
The second most important task done, he went home and perused the web for a nice outfit to wear to his tea meeting with “Lucifer”. A new kilt, belt and boots would do the trick. He would go to a nicer store for a dress shirt once he had the items.
Markus felt invigorated for the first time in several years once he had made the purchases. His life had been fraught with one setback or disaster after another for quite some time. He and his girlfriend of five years had split up last month, both of his grandfathers had passed while they were together, and his mother, the only family he had left, had developed Alzheimer’s and had already forgotten who he was. Markus couldn’t afford to take care of her on his own, and had been forced to place her in a home. A change would be welcome.
So, he started on the hardest and most important task: learning Japanese. He had three months to get fluent enough to get by without being seen as disrespectful. He had been an avid fan of most anime and manga for nearly thirty years, and hopefully watching the subtitled anime would come in handy in this endeavor. Thinking about his upcoming trip, Markus realized he’d need somewhere to stay. He scoured the internet, looking at reviews and ads for various hotels in the area of the restaurant he’d be dining at. After several hours of searching, he selected a place called Rikyuan Kyoto Nishikyogoku. He sent them an email detailing his trip and his needs, and got a reply with the costs. He put it on a credit card, and felt one more piece of the puzzle slip into place.
Markus made the necessary arrangements at work the next day, “planning” on two full weeks of being gone. Thankfully, his company was extremely flexible, and allowed him to take the required days off, no questions asked. When not working, Markus was deep in his Japanese lessons, cross-referencing what he heard in his anime with what he was learning. It took almost the entire three months, but by the end of it, he was watching entire episodes of “One-Punch Man” without subtitles and understanding about eighty percent of it.
Reading the katakana and hiragana, however, was proving to be a little more difficult. He could recognize the symbols for the various shops and restaurants, but was far from reading a newspaper.
On February tenth, he checked that the ticket was still valid, and packed enough for a month away. It was a depressingly small, single bag that he wound up having. Since a kilt was easy to care for, and he would be wearing a second one anyway, all he really had to pack were a few shirts, socks and underwear for the trip alongside his small bag of toiletries.
Once he was fully packed, he went about his life as usual. Work, eat, video games, sleep, and repeat. There was little in the way of friends, and no family left to visit besides his mother, who sadly never recognized him.
The day before his flight left, he decided to visit his mother one last time. He drove himself to the retirement home, and signed himself in to see her. It was a bright, if cold, afternoon.
Knocking on her door, he called out, “Hello? Mom? It’s me, Markus. May I come in?”
“Markus? Markus, Markus…. Now where have I heard that name before? Oh! Yes, please come in!” she replied.
Opening the door, he was surprised to see his mother in a bathrobe with a broad smile and outstretched arms. “My son! I’ve missed you. Your father is at work, but he should be home in an hour or so. I have some tea in the fridge. Would you like some?” she asked, her soft voice as pleasant as it ever was in his childhood. She wrapped him up in a warm, if weak, hug in her fragile arms.
“No thanks, Mom. I’ll get some water, instead. Can I get you a glass, too?” he replied.
“Oh, please. I’d appreciate that. I’ll just have a seat, then,” she said, taking a seat on the small chair at the writing desk.
Markus got two glasses of water from the tap, handed one to his mother and sat in a chair. “Mom? I’ve got something to tell you. Promise you won’t get mad?”
“I promise, son. Now, what is it?”
“I’m going on a trip tomorrow. To Kyoto for a business meeting. I don’t know when I’ll return,” he said softly.
“Oh! My boy is finally getting to travel. Your father will be so proud of you. He should be home soon, you know,” she said, taking a sip of her water.
Markus’ breath hitched at the second mention of his father, who had been dead and gone these past seventeen years. Forcing a smile, he said, “Yeah, Mom. You know how dad is, though. He works so much to make sure we have what we need.”
“He sure does, Markus. I do hope you get to see him before you leave. It’d mean the world to him. So! What’s this business meeting about?” she asked happily.
“Well, I’m not sure, if I’m honest. I just got a letter to meet someone in Kyoto. They included an open-ended plane ticket and everything. I checked everything out, and it’s all legitimate. It’s probably something pretty important. I just wish I knew why they chose a relative nobody like me,” he replied, deep in thought.
“It’s because my son is an amazing person. That’s why. I just know it,” she said, setting down her mostly untouched water on the writing desk. “I’m getting tired, now. Come see me again soon? I miss you so much,” she pleaded.
“Okay, Mom. As soon as I can. Let me help you to bed, okay? I know you’re tired,” Markus said, offering an arm to his mother.
“You’re such a sweet boy. You got that from your father, you know.”
His mother grunted softly as she climbed into bed, pulling the covers over her shoulders.
“I love you, Mom. Get some rest, and I’ll come see you as soon as I can, okay?”
“Okay, sweetheart. He’ll take care of you, you know.”
“Who will, Mom?”
“The man you’re going to meet for tea. He’ll take care of you. I’m sure of it,” she said sleepily.
“...meet for tea? What? I never…”
But Markus’ mother was already fast asleep, snoring softly. Markus looked at his mother in wonder. Shaking his head, he kissed her forehead and walked out of her room, shutting the door as quietly as he could manage.
He walked to the front desk and informed the receptionist that his mother was asleep, and that he would be leaving in the morning for Japan, in case she asked about him.
“Oh, that sounds wonderful, sir! I hope you enjoy your trip. I’ll make sure the aides know that she is asleep. Thank you for visiting her. I know it’s hard, but it does help them. Even when they don’t recognize you, connecting to their past is always helpful. Please be safe,” he said.
“Thank you. I will be. Take care of her, okay?” Markus asked softly, swallowing past the tight lump in his throat.
The receptionist nodded with a smile, and Markus went home, crying silently.
Obscenely early the next morning, Markus tossed his travel bag into his car and drove off to the airport. The drive was thankfully smooth and without any serious traffic. He got a decent spot in the long term parking lot, and went to check in to his flight.
Surprisingly enough, the wait for check-in was short and quick, allowing him to get to his gate with over an hour to spare. With such ample time, Markus got breakfast, and was able to savor the mostly bland fare. The boarding process was quick and efficient, and the other passengers were mostly quiet and tired. This allowed them to be able to leave a full fifteen minutes early, and Markus was soon on his way to Kyoto.
He found himself the only resident of first class, oddly enough. He and the flight attendant spoke cordially a few times, and he busied himself on his phone for most of the trip, napping occasionally for the nearly fourteen hour flight.
He was gently awoken by his flight attendant. “Markus? We will be landing soon. I need you to sit up and get your seatbelt on, okay?” she said softly.
“Hrmm? Oh. Okay, Sophia. I’m up. Thank you,” he replied with a smile. Sophia nodded and went to buckle herself in as well.
Safely buckled, Markus awaited the plane’s touchdown.
The plane landed, and all passengers disembarked just as orderly and quietly as they boarded. Once his bag had been claimed, Markus left the airport, and took his first breath of the air in Kyoto.
The air was cold, clean and crisp, with a promise of snow in the future. Markus had been busy during his flight, checking on the best ways to get to his destination. He settled on taking a bus, and then a train, as that was an experience he’d never had. Markus oriented himself, finding the correct stop, and sat down on a nearby bench to wait.
His adventure in Japan had just begun.
Next
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Greetings! I hope you enjoy this new tale I've spun up! Trying a different POV this time around. Let me know what you think.
​
Markus gazed once more at the package. It was tubular in shape, about ten inches in length, and rattled slightly when he shook it. There was no return address, and the delivery label was obviously hand-written in a gorgeous calligraphic font. Someone definitely took their time and care in creating this.
However, he didn’t recall ordering anything, nor did he have any friends or family with a looming marriage, so this arrival warranted some concern. It smelled somewhat of a campfire, but was otherwise a normal, nondescript cardboard tube with plastic caps.
As he inhaled the scent surrounding the tube, his mind was cast back to the few camping trips he had taken with his father, and of the many blóts he had performed with his old Kindred before they disbanded. Good memories, all. With a smile on his face, he gently uncapped the tube and emptied the contents out into his heavy palm.
As he had been expecting a letter, he wasn’t disappointed. What was interesting was the fact that said letter was made of honest-to-goodness vellum. A rolled piece of vellum, kept tight by a heavy signet ring.
Markus took the vellum to the kitchen table, and gently slid the ring off of it, laying it down, ignored for now.
Whomever had sent this to him had some serious skills. He was looking at what appeared to be an illuminated invitation. The handwriting was as exquisite as the lettering on the delivery label, and was a veritable joy to read.
Dearest Markus,
I am cordially inviting you to tea.
Please meet me at Kitcho Arashiyama – Kyoto, Japan.
Enclosed, please find your ticket to Japan.
I expect to see you there in three month’s time, at four PM local time on February 14th, 2023.
Yours,
Lucifer
Markus sat the letter down beside the seal, dumbfounded. Lucifer? Either someone was attempting to draw him into another LARP, or they must have sent the message to the wrong guy. Curious, he inspected the ring.
It was a heavy ring, with a curious, angular symbol embossed on it, surrounded by an almost hypnotic pattern of lines. The same symbol was also on either side of the ring. Smirking, he took a snapshot of it with his phone and did an image search.
It was, indeed, the sigil of Lucifer. Someone must have gone to some expense for this. Remembering that the message had said something about a plane ticket, Markus snatched up the tube and shook it some more. Out floated a second item. Picking it up off the floor, Markus saw that it looked curiously like a ticket of some sort. Round-trip from Louisville to Kyoto, open-ended. Nonstop, first class. Holy shit.
In disbelief, Markus checked the ticket online. It was booked through Quantas, and was, indeed, legitimate. Sitting back in the chair, he realized that he would be going to Japan in three months.
Three months was hardly enough time to get his passport in order. Still, if someone spent this much on a flight for him, he owed it to them to do his utmost to be there on time, and at his best.
The next day, he called in to work and went to a post office in Louisville to apply for a passport. Figuring the expense would be worth it, he went ahead and got it expedited. No sense in it arriving the day after his flight. This way, he would have it around the third week of January, leaving him enough time to not panic about having everything ready.
The second most important task done, he went home and perused the web for a nice outfit to wear to his tea meeting with “Lucifer”. A new kilt, belt and boots would do the trick. He would go to a nicer store for a dress shirt once he had the items.
Markus felt invigorated for the first time in several years once he had made the purchases. His life had been fraught with one setback or disaster after another for quite some time. He and his girlfriend of five years had split up last month, both of his grandfathers had passed while they were together, and his mother, the only family he had left, had developed Alzheimer’s and had already forgotten who he was. Markus couldn’t afford to take care of her on his own, and had been forced to place her in a home. A change would be welcome.
So, he started on the hardest and most important task: learning Japanese. He had three months to get fluent enough to get by without being seen as disrespectful. He had been an avid fan of most anime and manga for nearly thirty years, and hopefully watching the subtitled anime would come in handy in this endeavor. Thinking about his upcoming trip, Markus realized he’d need somewhere to stay. He scoured the internet, looking at reviews and ads for various hotels in the area of the restaurant he’d be dining at. After several hours of searching, he selected a place called Rikyuan Kyoto Nishikyogoku. He sent them an email detailing his trip and his needs, and got a reply with the costs. He put it on a credit card, and felt one more piece of the puzzle slip into place.
Markus made the necessary arrangements at work the next day, “planning” on two full weeks of being gone. Thankfully, his company was extremely flexible, and allowed him to take the required days off, no questions asked. When not working, Markus was deep in his Japanese lessons, cross-referencing what he heard in his anime with what he was learning. It took almost the entire three months, but by the end of it, he was watching entire episodes of “One-Punch Man” without subtitles and understanding about eighty percent of it.
Reading the katakana and hiragana, however, was proving to be a little more difficult. He could recognize the symbols for the various shops and restaurants, but was far from reading a newspaper.
On February tenth, he checked that the ticket was still valid, and packed enough for a month away. It was a depressingly small, single bag that he wound up having. Since a kilt was easy to care for, and he would be wearing a second one anyway, all he really had to pack were a few shirts, socks and underwear for the trip alongside his small bag of toiletries.
Once he was fully packed, he went about his life as usual. Work, eat, video games, sleep, and repeat. There was little in the way of friends, and no family left to visit besides his mother, who sadly never recognized him.
The day before his flight left, he decided to visit his mother one last time. He drove himself to the retirement home, and signed himself in to see her. It was a bright, if cold, afternoon.
Knocking on her door, he called out, “Hello? Mom? It’s me, Markus. May I come in?”
“Markus? Markus, Markus…. Now where have I heard that name before? Oh! Yes, please come in!” she replied.
Opening the door, he was pleasantly surprised to see his mother in a bathrobe with a broad smile and outstretched arms. “My son! I’ve missed you. Your father is at work, but he should be home in an hour or so. I have some tea in the fridge. Would you like some?” she asked, her soft voice as pleasant as it ever was in his childhood. She wrapped him up in a warm, if weak, hug in her fragile arms.
“No thanks, Mom. I’ll get some water, instead. Can I get you a glass, too?” he replied.
“Oh, please. I’d appreciate that. I’ll just have a seat, then,” she said, taking a seat on the small chair at the writing desk.
Markus got two glasses of water from the tap, handed one to his mother and sat in a chair. “Mom? I’ve got something to tell you. Promise you won’t get mad?”
“I promise, son. Now, what is it?”
“I’m going on a trip tomorrow. To Kyoto for a business meeting. I don’t know when I’ll return,” he said softly.
“Oh! My boy is finally getting to travel. Your father will be so proud of you. He should be home soon, you know,” she said, taking a sip of her water.
Markus’ breath hitched at the second mention of his father, who had been dead and gone these past seventeen years. Forcing a smile, he said, “Yeah, Mom. You know how dad is, though. He works so much to make sure we have what we need.”
“He sure does, Markus. I do hope you get to see him before you leave. It’d mean the world to him. So! What’s this business meeting about?” she asked happily.
“Well, I’m not sure, if I’m honest. I just got a letter to meet someone in Kyoto. They included an open-ended plane ticket and everything. I checked everything out, and it’s all legitimate. It’s probably something pretty important. I just wish I knew why they chose a relative nobody like me,” he replied, deep in thought.
“It’s because my son is an amazing person. That’s why. I just know it,” she said, setting down her water on the writing desk. “I’m getting tired, now. Come see me again soon? I miss you so much,” she pleaded.
“Okay, Mom. As soon as I can. Let me help you to bed, okay? I know you’re tired,” Markus said, offering an arm to his mother.
“You’re such a sweet boy. You got that from your father, you know.”
His mother grunted softly as she climbed into bed, pulling the covers over her shoulders.
“I love you, Mom. Get some rest, and I’ll come see you as soon as I can, okay?”
“Okay, sweetheart. He’ll take care of you, you know.”
“Who will, Mom?”
“The man you’re going to meet for tea. He’ll take care of you. I’m sure of it,” she said sleepily.
“...meet for tea? What? I never…”
But Markus’ mother was already fast asleep, snoring softly. Markus looked at his mother in wonder. Shaking his head, he kissed her forehead and walked out of her room, shutting the door as quietly as he could manage.
He walked to the front desk and informed the receptionist that his mother was asleep, and that he would be leaving in the morning for Japan, in case she asked about him.
“Oh, that sounds wonderful, sir! I hope you enjoy your trip. I’ll make sure the aides know that she is asleep. Thank you for visiting her. I know it’s hard, but it does help them. Even when they don’t recognize you, connecting to their past is always helpful. Please be safe,” he said.
“Thank you. I will be. Take care of her, okay?” Markus asked softly, swallowing past the tight lump in his throat.
The receptionist nodded with a smile, and Markus went home, crying silently.
************
Obscenely early the next morning, Markus tossed his travel bag into his car and drove off to the airport. The drive was thankfully smooth and without any serious traffic. He got a decent spot in the long term parking lot, and went to check in to his flight.
Surprisingly enough, the wait for check-in was short and quick, allowing him to get to his gate with over an hour to spare. With ample time, Markus got breakfast, and was able to savor the mostly bland fare. The boarding process was quick and efficient, and the other passengers were mostly quiet and tired. This allowed them to be able to leave a full fifteen minutes early, and Markus was soon on his way to Kyoto.
He found himself the only resident of first class, oddly enough. He and the flight attendant spoke cordially a few times, and he busied himself on his phone for most of the trip, napping occasionally for the nearly fourteen hour flight.
He was gently awoken by his flight attendant. “Markus? We will be landing soon. I need you to sit up and get your seatbelt on, okay?” she said softly.
“Hrmm? Oh. Okay, Sophia. I’m up. Thank you,” he replied with a smile. Sophia nodded and went to buckle herself in as well.
Safely buckled, Markus awaited the plane’s touchdown.
The plane landed, and all passengers disembarked just as orderly and quietly as they boarded. Once his bag had been claimed, Markus left the airport, and took his first breath of the air in Kyoto.
The air was cold, clean and crisp, with a promise of snow in the future. Markus had been busy during his flight, checking on the best ways to get to his destination. He settled on taking a bus, and then a train, as that was an experience he’d never had. Markus oriented himself, and found the correct stop, and sat down on a nearby bench to wait.
His adventure in Japan had just begun.