For more than a year now I’ve been wanting to purchase a new car. Not that there is anything wrong with my truck, it just drinks gas like there’s no tomorrow. It also has 112,000 miles on it now (1 year ago it has 93,000 on it. Apparently I’m driving a lot more now than I used to), and I’ve had to put some money into it to keep it running (about $1000 in the past couple months).

I try not to jump into any purchases, Katherine can vouch for that . Whether it be a new laptop (3 months to pick one out and decide on it), a new hat, a pair of jeans, which kit airplane, or which car. Websites, reviews, emailing, talking to other owners, staring, pacing back and forth, and phone calls. If there is a “collectors” edition and a “normal” edition of a DVD that i want, I’ll put them both back on the shelf after looking at the boxes and then go research them online to figure out which one I want and weigh the costs. Or, in the case of jeans, if they aren’t JUST right they go back on the shelf. And then Katherine gets angry at me and hits me with them because we’ve been to 30 stores looking for jeans and i still haven’t found any.

ANYway. My point, in all that rambling, is that i am picky and i don’t impulse buy (very often) even when i need to buy something.

This weekend Katherine asked me what i wanted to do, and she then suggested we go test drive cars. Something I hadn’t gotten to do yet with the cars I’ve been researching. I am looking for a small car that is good on gas, and has enough power to get through the mountains and hills in West Virginia. After a couple months of looking around I settled on the Toyota Yaris, Hyundai Elantra, and the Honda Civic as possible choices. 3 brands with very good reputations, one of which (Toyota) I’ve owned for 10 years and had no problems with. After researching more, I narrowed it down to first the Yaris or the Elantra. The Civic, while a good car, has a higher starting price than the others with the same features. After further research I pretty much eliminated the Yaris. While the user reviews of it are positive, the features to price isn’t quite there. When configured the same as the Elantra (using ‘popular packages’) the Yaris comes out $1000 more. I’m also not a big fan of the “Center Mounted Instruments,” I want them right in front of me. The rear seat is slightly larger in the Elantra as well, not that I carry extra people very often. With all that in mind, consumer reports didn’t give it a recommended buy tag, where the Civic and the Elantra do have Consumer Reports recommendations.

So, after grabbing a hot pocket for lunch we headed up to the dealership to test drive an Elantra. My main concern was that I wouldn’t be comfortable in it. I drove a Hyundai Sonata to Michigan last summer, and loved it, but it is the next size car up. Luckily, the room in the Elantra is very comparable. I took the GLS trim for a spin and took it threw its paces, and headed back. Then we took out an SE, which Katherine drove (being that she can drive a manual much better than I can). Not too much difference between how they handled, but it had a couple things I was hoping to get in my next car, like radio controls on the wheel. Oh well, not really worth it.

Went in and talked to the guy. At this point I was happy with the car, and I wanted to know actual numbers. That means credit checks and all that. Fun. It went back and forth a couple of times. Finally I told them to run the credit check and made another lower offer, on the car to take it off the lot that day (under the condition that I got to see the final numbers). At this point I started getting a little nervous. This was a big purchase, and even though I’ve researched it for months now, I still felt like I was rushing into it. Nothing had been signed yet, so I could still walk out. The numbers they came back with were good. About $50 a month better than I was hoping for. My current price was almost $2000 less than the $17~something thousand at the dealers in Morgantown. With multiple reassurances that I wasn’t making an awful mistake I took the deal.

So far it is a solid car. I averaged about 30 miles to the gallon this weekend. The low-gas light seems to pop on when you have 2 gallons left, so 40 to 60 miles of remaining fuel is a good indicator. I drove this tank of gas pretty hard, accelerating hard up hills and off the line on stop lights and could have gotten about 380 to 390 miles out of the tank. I’m guessing that on a road trip of solid highway driving the car will get between 430 and 450 miles to a tank. On average I expect to see about 27mpg, so roughly 370 to 380 miles per tank, with the amount of city driving that I do. Thats significantly better than the 10 to 18mpg that I’m used to in my truck (180 to 280 miles per tank, usually averaging 200).

Now, I just have to figure out how I want to mount my iPod. I have a couple of ideas. The nicer of the ideas will involve making a custom metal bracket and taking the dash apart. Which option I take depends on how well I can hide the audio and power cables. I’m going to attempt to keep this car looking nice and not like my truck .

With all the different political candidates running for president, you would think the nation would have a wide variety from which to choose. But they all basically boil down to either democrat or republican in the end. I believe the country is ready for a change. I believe the country needs a change. Something fresh and as yet unheard of needs to occur to bring this country back to its glory days – back to a time when you could be proud to be an American. With that said, I present my choice for our next president:

“To My Love”

To my Love, I send to you

This little poem to see you through

The dreary day that has begun,

(Although quite warm, even without the sun).

If despair should overcome,

Due to others’ stupidity or sheer boredom,

Think of my smile and a kiss,

Sent to you upon my wish

This dreary day to see you through;

This poem, my Love, I send to you.

It’s rare that Katherine and I actually get to spend a weekend together. This past weekend was one of those weekends, something that I think we both needed. Next weekend will be another. I think we may be spoiling ourselves.

We caught Cloverfield this past weekend, incredible monster movie. I highly recommend it. I’m upset that I’ll have to wait till June to get the DVD.

moar funny pictures

moar funny pictures

Katherine has been much more industrious on the site than I have been. Not a big surprise, i hardly work on my other site either . She was working on her pet page, and I commented that it was missing some crucial “Mike jumping down a mountain” information. Katherine told me to add it myself.

Enter “Reflections” … In places where Katherine or I want to add, elaborate, blatantly lie to make ourselves look like super heroes, whatever, we will add a section at the bottom called “Reflections” … everything below that line is written by the other person. Everything above it, by the author on the page.

Seems like a good way to both have a voice on any one page, without the other interfering with what the first has done.

Cause I know that I, at least, do that.

The new page is looking pretty good. I think I’ve gotten most of the bugs worked out.
There are a couple of things still that I want to take care of:

• Clean up the XHTML code, its not valid in all places
• Convert all the graphics to png

I decided to start from a theme this time around. Having just redesigned my personal website and working on the redesigned website at work I didn’t really want to design a site from scratch. I’m generally happy with the theme that we chose to use, just a couple of coding problems that need worked out (think I’ve caught most of them).

For those of you that use RSS, there is a link at the bottom to the RSS feeds. If you find any problems with display or errors, please shoot me an email (mike@kathnmike.us or mike@the-forgotten.org)

Just a little prayer to say for a friend when someone is making his or her day miserable.

After making a trip to the dump this morning to dispose of a futon mattress smelling of cat urine, Mike and I traveled to Cumberland in search of food. We wanted to try something new, so we decided to drive around until we found a restaurant at which we felt like eating. For some absurd reason, many of the restaurants in Cumberland were closed, because apparently Saturday afternoons are the time for everyone to stay home. We finally found an open restaurant called Midtown Bar and Grille (yes, with the retarded “e” at the end, I don’t know why). We walked in and the waitress told us to sit anywhere. We chose a tall bar table with two chairs and seated ourselves. In a moment, the waitress brought over place mats and silverware wrapped in a napkin and asked us if we’d ever been to the restaurant before. We answered negatively. As the waitress was addressing us, I was wondering why she hadn’t brought us any menus. She then informed us of their special for the day: fried chicken with mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and maybe some other things. Then she stood there looking at us. I asked her if there were any other choices. She said, “No.” SHE SAID, “NO!” What kind of restaurant only serves one dish? It was completely ridiculous. I told the waitress that we were looking for a restaurant with a little more variety and we stood up to leave. She said, “No problem. Come back when you’re in the mood for chicken.” Yeah, like that will happen.