A couple days ago we learned that our old car, which we traded in the second Saturday of May when we bought the Outback, has apparently been sold.

I learned this because whoever bought it as been driving back and forth across the 520 bridge without a Good To Go™ pass beginning on May 27. So I was mailed a bill for their tolls.

Now, I notified the DMV with the proper paperwork just a couple days after trading the car in. So, well before the new owners started driving across. Of course our Good To Go pass had been moved to our new caw. And even though the old car had been registered with our account, it had been before the state issued us new plates, only months before we sold the car (I hadn’t updated the account because, among other things, the transponder inside the car would have made it unnecessary).

So the rates whoever the new owners are are racking up are the highest possible.

I called, mostly worried about this continuing to be charged to me (and other possible liabilities if the car keeps showing as registered to me this long after we sold it!). A few weeks after the end of the billing period in this bill, the new owners information did come through (and apparently they are continuing to drive back and forth over the bridge without a pass). Of course, they haven’t received a bill yet for any of their crossings so they may not be aware of the toll (even with the giant signs and flashing lights). I know this because a good friend used to work the phone lines for the toll system, and had many stories of people calling in upset about the toll because they didn’t understand that that’s what the signs meant.

Anyway, all I needed to do was send a photocopy of the paperwork from the dealership showing the day we traded the car in, and the new owners will be billed for these tolls, too.

I was strangely happy to learn the car has sold. I hope the tolls don’t come as too much of a shock to the new owners.

In other news, the jet stream is shifting, and Western Washington will be entering summer weather in the next few days. The transition has come early enough that Independence Day should be dry, for a change. I want to point out I’m at best ambivalent about this. Temperatures will get into the 80s by Saturday. To my friends in Arizona, that is laughable, but for me it’s frickin’ hot. I’m a cold climate person by nature. I am not exaggerating when I say I wear shorts outside when the temp is 50°—heck, I freaked out an acquaintance two years ago being out in shorts and t-shirt when it was 48°!

I would rather the summer weather not get here until a little bit later, such as the most typical, July 12. But it had to arrive eventually. I should be grateful we aren’t suffering the heat waves they’re having in much of the rest of the country.

I haven’t heard as many fireworks going off in the neighborhood as I recall last year starting the weekend before the fourth. Of course, literally the moment I started typing that sentence a series of booms which sound as if they’re coming for a couple blocks west started. There, that’s probably more booms then I’ve heard the previous four days combined.

I guess the holiday has arrived!