Smog check
The bad news: I needed to get a smog check this year for my 2005 Prius.
The good news: I went and got one a couple of months before my registration renewal was due, back in late March.
The bad news: I apparently then forgot to actually pay my registration renewal.
The good news: The DMV sent me a late-registration notice to remind me.
The bad news: I remembered getting a smog check, but I had no idea where the paperwork was for that.
The good news: When I picked up a big pile of papers, prepared to sort through it at tedious length, the very first item on the top of the stack was the original registration notice, with the smog check report/receipt stapled to it.
The bad news: The lack of anything written on the registration form (I usually annotate such forms when I pay them) indicated that I had indeed failed to pay my registration on time.
The good news: You can renew registration online, easily and conveniently, and I went to do so.
The bad news: It turns out that smog checks expire after 90 days, and because I did mine early in the allotted time period, it has now expired.
The good news: The DMV website lets you pay the fees even if you don’t have the smog check done, so at least I won’t have any further late fees tacked on.
And the place where I went for my smog check in March (SMOG IT Test Center, on Evelyn in Mountain View) was pretty convenient and went pretty smoothly. So I just have to go back to them and have them do another one. A hassle, but not a disaster.
But still, Past Jed, wouldn’t it have been easier (and less expensive) to just pay the registration renewal on time?