After nearly ten years of faithful, pretty reliable service, and 150,000 miles, I'm starting to plan for Alberta's semi-retirement. She's a '93 Explorer who got me through the winter storms of 1995-96—actually, it was her ability to park in 18 inches of unplowed snow in Georgetown that got me elected as the permanent car pool driver when we were rehearsing Living Together for the defunct Trinity Players. We've gone to the Outer Banks beaches, gotten lost in the Wharton Forest in New Jersey, and forded a stream in Montgomery County, Maryland together. We don't talk about the number of repairs that have been made to her 5-speed transmission.

But for rolling back and forth every day between Reston and Vienna, she just sucks too much gas. Of the gas/electric hybirds out there, the Toyota Prius has most of my mindshare at present. The second generation of the car is to be introduced with the 2004 model year, and I'm saving my shekels for a 2005 model. Number one, I'm one of those second-sigma adopters: I let the early adopters find most of the bugs. Number two, by '05 I expect to have enough to pay cash outright for it. Once in my life, I want to sit in a dealer's showroom and not have to play negotiation games with financing terms. "How much is the car? Fine, here's a check."

The duckspeaking of vehicle emissions classes is amusing:

Prius is designed to be a Partial Zero Emission Vehicle (PZEV), a standard created by the California Air Resources Board and adopted by other states. PZEV certification means the Prius has near-zero tailpipe emissions, zero evaporative emissions and a special extended warranty on emission control components. It is one step cleaner than the previous generation's Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicle (SULEV) certification.

And it's got Bluetooth! How cool is that?

I'm planning on keeping Alberta. She's already been to Key West, and she wants to visit Maine.

posted: 6:17:48 PM  

A found poem, composed of subject lines of the particularly virulent spam received today, in the order received:

Do you need some?
Re: =?UNKNOWN?Q?I=92ll?= tell you why!
Get some right now
Do you want help?
I cant even think of that

posted: 6:08:19 PM