AutoNeurotica

I remember what I wanted to say today, but wrote about the new car instead. The state of the folks on the corners selling me stuff has really got out of hand. It's the end of the day and I'm tired and more than likely I have an upset or chatty 2 year old in the back seat, the last thing I need is pressure from a local parishoner selling oversized pixie sticks to raise money for their volunteer based drug rehab program that he's probably in anyway. I don't mind the occassional pan handlers and down on their luck homeless folks, practiced looks of down-trodden and disheveled. I've been known to give a few bucks here and there, depending on how good the sign is. Honesty is best, signs like "I need money for beer" will definitely work with me.

It's the guys who come up and want to talk to you and ask you three or four times to roll down your window. Really. If I didn't have $5 hanging out by the time you got to me, the only thing that pestering me is going to do is creep me out. And it's always churches that need money. Don't these places have tithing anymore? Collection plates? Church Bizzars? Anything? Has it come down to two guys on every freakin corner and highway off ramp on my way home so this one church can survive? My guess is if you've got a congregation that will spend hours on a street corner, money is probably not your highest priority.

I'd like to give props to the guy on 183 and I-35 who sells flowers. He's been there for at least the few months I've been going by. He has two bundles of flowers, one in each hand and he just walks on by and kinda gestures to each car. He keeps his distance and doesn't intrude. It's more like a hot dog cart or Girl Scout cookies than anything and it doesn't bother me. I am, however, saddened that whenever anyone approached my car, my nearly 2 year old daughter's first words are "No thank you." What does that say?

I was going to ask Chris about the Bid Dig, but I checked is journal out and I think he's a bit pissed about it.

My wife wants a new car. The car she has, a Suzuki Grand Vitara, is too small for her. She feels claustrophobic when Rowan and I are in there with her and we've just done some shopping. She doesn't like that it skids a lot in the rain. It's also got something wrong with the transfer casing, something that neither of us know anything about and not nearly enough to know if we're being taken at the mechanics shop or the dealer. So she's opting for a new vehicle.

The vehicle of choice is the 2003 Buick Rendezvous. Rendezvous is a Franglais word that we take to mean, "meeting place" or "meeting event." The actual French, rendez vous means to present yourself at an appointment, or be present depending on the tense. So Buick has taken this vehicle and given it a colloquialism as a name. It's a rather odd name if you ask me. I'm with Carlin on this, when did we stop giving cars cool names like Cobra and Mustang. I'd even settle for more alpha-numeric titles like 911 or 5000. I'm only guessing Trans Am means Trans American, which only makes some sense, where else would it be driven.

But I've gone off topic, back to buying a new car.

It's not that I don't want to have a new car, it's that this is a $32,000 gas guzzler. It's very nice on the inside; leather, DVD player, all the bells and whistles. (Literally, there's a beeping when you are in reverse. Presumably because at some point a large SUV backed over a kid and the ensuing legal action required it.) The point is more that I'm afraid of change and a bigger car note. (Sidebar, it's called car note in Texas. When I was still in CO it was car payment. I move down here and everything in a "note." House note, car note. Can't southerners say "payment?") We may have a larger family in the future so a larger car is definitely in order. My question is how did our parents do it? Growing up we had one car at a time. The first was a 69 or 72 gold Ford station wagon. The next was a Datsun B210. I don't know if you guys remember Datsuns, they were the precursor to Nissans, but smaller. The B210 was about the size of a Geo Storm. Family of four, groceries, extra kids from soccer. How did it all work? Why only now are we buying these 7 seat behemoths? I feel like it's over kill, but I also don't really get the music today or reality TV so maybe I'm just old. Yes I like the space, yes I like the sleek design, but man that gas mileage really gets in my craw. Her car now doesn't do great, neither does mine. It just shows where our priorities are. I keep thinking of getting out of my lovely Kia Sportage and into a hybrid car.

Anyway, she's going to find out today if we qualify so look for more posts on how the monster works in real life.