(no subject)

I'm getting frustrated with not having a car. There are getting to be 1-2
things a week I would go to except that I don't have one. There are
probably one or two more things that are more trouble than they should be.

I did the math and I guess I should get a ZipCar membership. It's not
intuitive though. For any one event, it seems like a bad deal. If I go for
a social event that's 4-6 hours, I'm paying $8.10/hr to be there. I'd be
worried about the psychological effect of being 'on zipcar time', wanting
to cut out early, or just worrying about the meter running that whole time
and the money ticking away.

The thing is that the rest of the time, when I'm not using the car, the
meter stops. If I own the car, the meter runs all the time. Depreciation,
maintenance, insurance; all of those things are always on. I could spend
$200/mo on zipcar for the next 10 years and still not add up to the base
price of a new car, by which time the car would have almost entirely
depreciated and run up quite some bills in repair and insurance.

So, basically I should just do it, use the zipcars parked a block away as
if my own car (not very much, based on my habits when I did own a car) and
I'll be doing OK.