Many milestones

[aome]

Today:

Would have been my grandparents' 81st wedding anniversary (they reached 72 years).
Is R&K's 24th wedding anniversary (next year is silver - how did we get so old?)
We bought a car. O_o

Comments

[abigail89]

Well, poo. Sorry the Prius is in bad shape and you're having to shell out for a new car. That's always a bummer. I'm holding out for the next few years for a used Subaru CrossTrek. They're very popular here and look like the right size for our downsized family.

Shetland! It's a tv series that our PBS station has been running. I love it!

Hope you are well!

[aome]

A fictional or nonfictional show about Shetland? How cool!

I've heard of the CrossTrek, but I'm not sure I've seen one on the road around here; it's the Outback wagon that's super-popular as far as Subarus go, with the Forester (I have a 2008 model, which was a lease in its former life) a close second.

Yeah, it sucks that the Prius didn't even last for three years. We haven't been able to get word from our insurance about whether or not it will be declared totaled because Toyota's corporate rep has decided to investigate it THREE times in response to Will's claim (he wants to be compensated by them for designing brakes that don't panic-stop properly at certain speeds, regardless of what insurance decides), and so the dealership can't take it apart to locate any internal damage (beyond the obvious bodywork) for State Farm's benefit until Toyota's claim rep has looked at everything they've wanted to see.

[sheron]

[aome]

That was Will's feeling about the Honda Civic, too - that it felt insubstantial and cheap. Sigh.

I never had any homework over the summer, either, but, as a parent, I'm much more aware of how much my kids lose when they don't have even nominal review work assigned them. MiniPlu, in particular, has so little confidence in math, the fact that she has forgotten so much makes her feel like she doesn't belong in her math class at all, but in with the slow kids. If she'd been given proper review work for the summer, some of that might have been eased up. (She is, indeed, a perfectly good student, but she is totally convinced that math is incomprehensible - her brain will lock up when she's overwhelmed, to the point that she wouldn't even be able to tell you the simplest things. And then she panics more. It's incredibly frustrating for all parties.

[hamsterwoman]

Congratulations on the new car! Even if you had to get it for less-than-ideal reasons... Hopefully it will serve you much better than the Prius has! (My family has driven a succession of Mazdas, and we've been very happy with them on the whole.)

I had mentally gotten this book confused with another one I'd been given by my Boston friend, and had been expecting a fantasy story when I decided to read it

I'm now curious which book you thought it was (because there's a "Raven B[short word]" book that I just recently finished and when I saw the underlined title, I originally read it as that. So I'm curious if it's the same book :)

[aome]

I feel a little twitchy because I don't feel like Mazda has had quite as good a prior reputation as, say, Toyota and Honda, but I also admit that I'm not as familiar with Mazda and also that Toyota seems to be struggling a bit recently, with vast recalls and such. So - fingers crossed! Karen's prior Mazda certainly served them well, and I remember that your minivan is a Mazda. Do you still use that vehicle for your road trips?

It's not so much that I thought Raven Black was a specific other title, only that I had it in my head that it was a fantasy book. I knew she had given me a fantasy book (which she had) but didn't remember it was the other title until I was a chapter or two into Raven Black. So, it just required some mental shifting - the story itself ended up being good, just not what I was initially expecting!

[hamsterwoman]

We no longer use the minivan for long trips since we got the Passat, because the diesel's mileage is SO much better -- like, about 2.5x in highway driving what the van gets. Because of this, we've basically kept the van so that it can do short runs to the grocery store/the dump, but haven't bothered with repairs it would need to become more roadworthy, like replacing the tires or figuring out what the heck is up with the "check engine" light.