"Show Me" my Licence Plates

Today, we set out with the goal of getting Missouri licence plates. After all was said and done, it was actually a lot less difficult and stressful than I was expecting. That said, there are a lot of small steps. To get new plates, you have to procure:

• The original title. This was not to tricky to do. I had it in my "Misc.to Keep" folder which holds a wide array of mementos, paperwork, passports, etc.
• The application form. Slightly tricky as you're supposed to fill in things like "horsepower" and "cylinders" etc. requiring trips online to figure out what exactly is the horespower of a Prius, which uses two different engines, sometimes in tandem, to provide power. 
• Proof of insurance. Quick trip to the friendly insurance website to print the proof- boom boom done.
• Statement of Non-Assessment. This WTF document essentially states that you don't owe the Missouri department of revenue any money. As an out of state resident coming in, I fail to see how I could possibly owe the state, but what the hey, I don't make the rules here. Apart from the pain of having to physically go to the office (involving finding parking in downtown Clayton, finding the building, etc.) actually getting the statement was very easy. The window tellers were friendly and fast and we pretty much zipped in and out of there in about twenty minutes. 
• VIN number and Odometer check. I would never have guessed reading two numbers would be so time consuming. We took the cars to the nearby Car X service station which was licensed to perform these checks, and we thought hey, two strings of numbers, how long can it take? At least half an hour passes. I start to get emotionally involved with As the World Turns airing in the waiting room. I don't understand the process- maybe they're waiting to see if the numbers will change over time. And Saori's car took even longer to check. Maybe for the odometer they ran out of fingers and toes and had to call up some friends to come over. Anyway, at the end of that you get an official stub of paper they don't even sign.
• $35 fee.

I took all of this stuff to the licence bureau which is actually run by a small company in a small empty shop that could have been an AT&T store at one time in downtown Clayton. Free parking, walked right in, and stamp stamp got my new "Show Me State" licence plates right there. 

The rear licence plate I swapped out with no problems. The front licence plate was a bit of a challenge. There are only a few states that require front and back licence plates. The state where I purchased my Prius (Arizona) does not require them, and so there was nothing on the front of my car to mount it to, since Prius's have a plastic bumper that comes to a gentle point. There were two small dimples where the licence plate holes should be, so I picked up some licence plate screws and drilled two small pilot holes where the dimples were. As it turns out, the dimples are where the licence plate bracket should be installed, and are nowhere near where the holes on the plates are. This close to school starting, I'm starting to feel like a chimpanzee in a space shuttle. I need to think a little more about what I'm doing.

Anyway, I did a little research online, found the bracket I needed and ordered it, so it should be coming here in the next two weeks. In the meanwhile I've got the front plate just kind of shoved up against the front windshield. (Yes, on the inside of the car). It feels kind of weird to lose my AZ plate, I'm going to miss it.

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Speaking of things to get, we did end up ordering a futon. We were torn between two futons, this nicer looking one which was comfortable and attractive and three times as expensive as the cheap one, and the cheap one, which was probably uncomfortable and would have degraded the rest of the living room, but was ridiculously cheap. So following my father's footsteps, I created a weighted chart to help us decide. For each of the categories- cost, comfort, appearance, we assigned a weight from 1-5, and then assigned a value to each category for each couch., so the cheap couch got a 5 for cost, for example. At the end, the weighted variables favored the cheap couch.

Ultimately, however, we ended up buying this couch which was almost as cheap as the cheap couch, with the added advantage of not making our home look like a sleazy dorm.