Well the votes are in on the license plates for Missouri and the blue bird won with over 50% of the vote! I am so happy and apparently I'm not the only one that thought the plates needed more color. It's just too bad we have to wait till 2009 for them. Hmmm...wonder if I can keep the old plates again like before? They make interesting conversation pieces. I've nailed mine to my Birdroom wall.
Update March 8, 2007: Ugh! I have just heard from Brad, a friend of mine, that they will be charging $20-$50 for the new plates over and above the usual rate. Or so the rumor goes. And since mine are personalized I, of course, pay a higher fee. This just pissed me off and made my day! It wasn't the general public who wanted new plates, it was some bureaucrat sitting in an office somewhere. Or however they decide they need new plates. Does someone just get a wild hair up their ass and say one day, "Gee I'm bored with these plates. I know, let's get new ones!" Supposedly these plates will be easier for law enforcement to read. Uhuh, give me a break. It will be harder for the renewal tabs to be stolen. Well we'll see. It occurred to me that the new plates will have that break in the middle, which I didn't realize would be there even though it's beaming at me in the picture. Why would they break up the word SAMPLE if it's not going to be done? It's okay for regular license numbers because they're usually divided up by three letters and then three numbers here in Missouri. Of course personalized are all one word unless you hyphenate it. Well is that gonna make my plate look retarded? Probably. I could let them go and go back to regular plates. Less revenue for DMV, but they'll never notice. It's not like they'll say, "Wow, we're short an extra $20 bucks because Donna let her vanity plates go. Damn, what will we do? We can't make the rent this month."
I've had that particular plate since about 1985 or maybe 1986. But a long time. I think people get used to seeing you driving around and they know you, even if they don't 'know' you per se. When I got a different car people I didn't know were honking at me. The only thing I could figure out was they were acknowledging that I now drive something different. May sound weird to some of you, but I live in a fairly small town and these things DO go on. I'll have to think about the new plate configuration and see how bad it looks. Maybe it won't be as bad as I imagine, but that's government for you. I really think that the old plates were fine. Somebody just decided we needed new ones to the tune of millions of dollars to redo the whole shebang. But of course it will be passed onto us, the unwilling consumer. Why not? After all we're probably going to get that nice National ID card before long anyway. Might as well go all the way and change it all. That national card is another story altogether.
