Got a Car

 

September 2008 in Los Gatos, CA

Make/Model: Pontiac G8 GT, 2009

(Original post; backup link)

Vroom vroom Ren Ren

So, I dragged poor Allie to the Renaissance Faire at Casa de Fruita. This is the first time she's been to one. She was a good sport about the whole thing, and I'm sure found it to be a bit over the top. Though she didn't get into it, she was taking in all the sights.

In the past, the quality of the headliner events at the Ren Faire have degraded. There was a time when they had actual knight melees held by the local reenactment groups and actual jousting. Then, main event become a show where the players would pretend to joust and battle. It turned out to be a silly WWE style show. I wanted to go this year to see if they got be on track. Though they didn't have the melee's of olde, they did have full on jousting again! It was more fun to watch than the fake show in years before.

The show that Allie liked best was a juggling show with a guy and his kid brother. The kid knew how to sell it. They put on a good show.

Car hunting

Allie and I have been car hunting for a long time. We’ve test driven a multitude of vehicles. We’ve given a second look at a myriad more. The reason for all this is the fact that I currently have a rather nice car, with a rather nasty habit. My Acura TL-Type S 2003 is a great car except that it needs a new transmission every 11,000 miles or so. Not good for the long run once the warranty is up. At this point, I don’t mind the nickel and dime costs associated with the average car once off warranty. I just don’t want to get hit with a $4000 repair bill and a week long car rental every 10 months or so. So, we need to trade in my TL for something else.
While car hunting, I’ve discovered features that used to be special only to the higher end cars are now included in the average cars. Of particular note, the high trim of 2009 Chevrolet Malibu has more features than my old TL, all for 10K less than what I paid for my car 6 years ago, and for nearly 15K less than the current price for a new TL. The level of quality across the mainstay brands keeps going up. Reliability is something that fluctuates, so it’s a good idea to always keep an eye on Consumer Reports and other sources. Right now, it appears some GM brands are doing well, while others haven’t quite got things figured out yet.
Given what I’ve been looking for, GM cars have been attracting my attention more than others. This surprizes me. Then again, I pretty much hate all the car brands for one reason or another. In general, I tend to gravitate towards American and Japanese, and show less interest in Korean and European cars. OMG, have you see the Smart Car? How dumb is that? Anyways, we think we know what we will end up with soon.

Weeks are flyin by

As October approaches, it really seems the weeks and months of 2008 are flying by. It dawned me recently while I was reading something terribly unimportant that I was literally wasting my time. I could be reading something more important, or doing something to improve my self, skills and what nots. I'm not wasting all of my time. I'm glad to spend time with my family.

This week, my cuzin is in the hospital awaiting labor. I visited her and her new husand in their room. It's funny I call him that. Her sister, myself and her all got married within the past year or so. Funny how that works. We were all in long term relationships and it just all kinda turned out that way.

On my way to a business type meeting thing, I visited my aunt and her husand yesterday. He was also in the hospital a recently for a serious matter. He was released quickly, so I didn't get a chance to visit him at the hospital, so I stopped by yesterday to see how he was going.

Man, why the heck did my parents move to some place that is literally more remove that the infamous Bumfuk, Idaho. I haven't seen then in aeons now.

What? Someone is VP pick for McCain?

Let’s patronize women in the 21st Century because it worked so well in the 20th Century. McCain’s pick for his running mate is one of those things that says, “See, I listen to you women. I know what you want because I’m smart like that.” It is an idiotic move that may have already backfired. For all the phony praise Palin got for her convention speech, in reality, she came off as seeming like she doesn’t really belong there. Her energy was strained and her message was without substance. I noticed very few people talking about the message itself. Most of the praise was about her poise. Joy. It weakens the McCain bid for the presidency.

Los Gatos Fiesta de Artes

Allie and I ended up having an enjoyable weekend. On Saturday, we got out into the fresh air and did a little cycling. I've been threatening to do it for a long time. The goal was to go down the path I would take if I rode my bike to work. I thought I could use my street bicycle because one leg of the trail is paved. Unfortunately, I discovered that a significant portion of the path is very gravelly, covered with rocks that are far too big to be safe for my street bicycle. So, in order to ride to work, I'm going to have to brave some rather dangerous city streets, or change the tires on my bike to handle rough terrain. I guess I can borrow Allie's bike (which is a "man's" type too), though it will need some adjustments. Anyway, I'm not cycling to work any time soon.

Instead of continuing down that path, we opted to head down to the local shopping center for a relaxing after-lunch smoothie break.

On Sunday, we meet up with my mother-in-law for some Dim Sum (and 'den some) at her favorite rest'rant. I can never comfortably eat Dim Sum on an empty stomach, so I ate some cereal before going. I don't know how good of an idea that was since I ended up eating too much Dim Sum.

Allie and I planned to head over to the Los Gatos Fiesta de Artes. We invited my mother-in-law to join us. A co-worker's son was at one of the booths that I was interested in (WinePod), so we planned to at least meet up there with them.

The day was warm and sunny. Maybe a little too warm. After going around the faire twice, I finally found the booth. My co-worker had just arrived as well. My wife used to work with us, so there was some catching up him and his wife.

Afterwards, Allie and I took her mother to a rest'rant that we hadn't tried yet, called Steamers Grillhouse. We had a rather expensive, yet tasty lunch. Of course, at this point, I had not yet fully processed the Dim Sum earlier in the day, so I ended up getting somewhat uncomfortably stuffed.

After we headed out and dropped my mother-in-law off, we went home to watch a rental, There Will Be Blood. In case you haven't seen the movie yet, here's a spoiler: Someone bleeds at the end. The rest of the 2.5 hours of the movie don't really lead up to that moment very well. It was about as organized in thought as my blog taken on the whole. The movie needed some serious editing.

Sometime around when we started watching the movie, Allie asked if I wanted dinner. My emphatic "No!" surprized her a little bit. The moment pasted quickly. In fact, I still feel kinda stuffed just thinking about how stuffed I was Sunday evening.

She didn't really watch most of the movie because a friend of hers called up to do some catching up. She talked to her about an hour or so. When she came back, she asked what happened. I was like, "It's too much to go into, and yet, it doesn't seem like anything at all." I didn't feel like going into detail since it didn't really interest me all that much. She asked again, and I relented, telling her about some of the uninteresting events that lead to nowhere. It almost didn't matter since there was such a big jump in time during the last scenes, it was like watching a whole other film; perhaps an independent short film that itself wasn't edited enough. Did I mention that There Will Be Blood of boring?

Well, I'm glad the bulk of my weekend was enjoyable, regardless the movie.