New car

So I bought a new car, a 2010 Volkswagen Golf Mk6 TDI with a DSG transmission and the "cold weather package" (heated front seats, heated side mirrors, heated washer nozzles). It's a diesel and it gets good gas mileage (I averaged over 46mpg on the way home). It certainly is nice to drive. It'll be hard to ever go back to a "lesser" car now! Of course I'll probably live to regret it when the warranty ends and I have to pay to maintain this extremely complicated vehicle.

Apparently there are only about 400 of these particular vehicles on the country right now, and I had to drive 130 miles to New Jersey to get one that I wanted.

In the parking lot at the dealer. It was a cold and dreary day.

Emily took this while she followed me home from New Jersey.

The steering wheel, with multifunction controls and paddle shifters.

The rear TDI badge.

Emily is the official picture taker and she didn't take any pictures of the whole car, oh well!

A productive weekend

I've had a decently productive weekend.

On Saturday: I had blood drawn and then went grocery shopping. We didn't too much groceries, so that was nice.

Then, I raked a ton of leaves out of the yard and cleaned up the gardens a bit. I also drilled some holes in the side of the house and attached a hose holder and actually secured the faucet we use (it was just sort of sitting a whole, so the lateral force of turning it on/off was being borne by the copper pipe). Then I swept off the deck.

I worked out on "the machine" for the first time in recent memory and my muscles were certainly sore afterwords.

Emily was out at the barn with Addy since about 12:30. I was hoping to get out and do some Christmas shopping for her, but she was home by the time I was ready to go.

Saturday night we went to Trader Joe's and bought some more yummy food and got some Creme Brulee coffee things from Starbucks that Emily discovered. They were really sweet, but yummy. There is this "challah bread" at Trader Joe's which is just extremely yummy bread. I never actually use it for anything other than just eating for bread's sake.

Sunday we went to Red Canoe and got some yummy soup and lots of muffins. So now we'll have breakfast the next few days too. Something to look forward to when waking up! Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous day outside. We didn't really do very much out there though. We took Radar to an open house for a few hours which was entertaining. She really got along well with the other dogs. She seemed happier than she has been since we've had her. She'd be a good second dog, I think. After we got home from the open house I fell asleep for a couple of hours and squandered all of the good weather.

Tonight we made Indian food with some masala simmer sauce, various kinds of peppers, tomatoes, onions, and chicken. Very yummy stuff. After we ate that we walked to dog, then watched the second Top Gear episode of the season.

Tomorrow is another chemo day which sort of sucks. Oh well. I don't think I'll be working at all this week. Hopefully I remember what I was doing when I make it back.

Oh, also: I bought a car. Or at least I put a down payment on one so it has my name on it. It's a 2010 VW Golf TDI 2-door. I wanted one with Xenon HID headlights, but there are actually none in the country yet and I don't feel like waiting. I'll get the $1700 tax credit and the sales tax deduction on my federal taxes, so the federal government is giving me a sweet deal to buy a German car. This will be the first new car I've ever bought, or for that matter the first at all that I've ever bought. I suspect it will be nicer than my Saturn. The dealer guy was supposed to call me on Saturday and give me a final figure so I could deal with the bank this week, since I'm planning to pick it up the day after Thanksgiving. He didn't call me though so I'll have to hound him tomorrow (I swear I get the impression they don't want to sell any cars) so I can get the bank stuff done before the bankers leave on their holiday.

The weekend

Rob and Barb came over on Saturday for a lunch. Though it was a pretty big lunch and ended up being dinner. The day started off drizzly but it cleared up and ended up being pretty nice. We grilled some steak out on the porch, had some salad, and some yummy potatoes. Rob and Barb brought brownies for dessert. It was good to see them again. I've pretty much lost touch with most of my old coop friends even though we all live near each other. They just celebrated their three year anniversary which is pretty crazy too!

Today was a gorgeous day. It was sunny about 70 degrees outside. Emily went out and rode her pony and took pictures in the morning. I took her car to have new tires put on, balanced, and aligned. Finally, her steering seems to be mostly normal. I went to Advance Auto Parts to try and get stuff for some routine work (new distributor cap, rotor, spark plug wires, etc.) but they didn't have most of it in stock. Shortly after that we went to Patapsco for a short little hike. There were tons of people who had the same idea. Most of the free entrances were jam packed with people parked all over the place but we found a spot on the Landing Rd/Cascade Falls entrance.

My tummy hasn't been feeling good all day. I kind of want to suspect the steak since I never eat it, but who knows.

Also, we got a new greyhound Saturday morning. Her name is Radar. She is pretty cute. She had already been in a foster home in Florida so she seems to be totally acclimated to life outside the track. She's not much of a walker though, you almost have to drag her out the door just to get her to go potty.

I decided that I definitely want a 2010 VW Golf TDI though it is proving difficult to find one that I want. They're rather in demand and most of the dealers around here don't have many in stock, and none have one that I would buy. There's one in New Jersey that is getting one that I would want but I don't really feel like messing around with getting one out of state. I need to call some more local dealers tomorrow and see if any of them are expecting some more.

Lastly, the new season of Top Gear started today. I managed to already get and watch it. It was pretty entertaining, though certainly not one of the best episodes I've seen. At least we have something fun to look forward to for some number of coming Sunday nights.

Being an adult sucks

How is it possible to have fun as an adult? It seems like there's just a never ending list of things to be worried about or spend money on. sigh.

Emily's car has been giving us fits this week. It's been out of commission all week long just to have a front brake job. Then we're replacing 3 tires, balancing, rotating, and aligning them. It'll cost a lot. I feel a bit silly given that the car is 11 years old, has 111k miles, and is worth like $2000. But then again it hasn't given us that much trouble so maybe it'll be worth it to keep it safe and running in the long run.

It the midst of my burning hatred of having car issues buying a new car (for me, hah!) has been brought back to the forefront of my thought.

I'm pretty sure I want a 2010 VW Golf TDI w/ DSG transmission. There's a $1700 tax credit for the DSG over the $1300 for the manual. That's pretty substantial money there. Plus you can write off state taxes on your federal taxes through the year. I've been in contact with the same VW guy we some months ago, he's pretty friendly and not pushy, which I really like. I still have dreams of moving to England in 2-3 years, and all VWs come with 3 year/36,000 "everything" warranties (e.g. oil changes included and stuff) (of course, you actually pay for this service in the cost of the vehicle, but whatever) ... so I wouldn't have it long enough to have to worry about insane problems!

We are very busy this weekend. Apparently we're getting our first greyhound in a long time to foster. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I don't think we have enough time amongst us to do all the things we want to and take care of a dog. But we'll have to. Also, Rob and Barb are coming over for a BBQ (though it might be cold and rainy). So maybe next week sometime I'll go test drive some VWs.

The 2010 VW GTI I'd like to test drive too, but it costs slightly more than the TDI, gets poorer gas mileage, and uses premium fuel. But it has 200BHP and does 0-60 in 6.7 seconds. It's probably insanely fun to drive. I drive like a granny anyway though, so who am I trying to fool?

Finished my workbench

It's been like a month and a half since I wrote anything on here. Can you tell I lost some steam? Emily and I haven't been up to a whole lot of exciting things. Pretty much the same schedule as usual, chemo every two weeks.

Emily's mom came up and visited and we had a fun time going to the Shenandoah Fiber Festival and out to Frederick, MD for a day.

The weather is certainly getting colder up here. Looks like I won't be doing any more biking and that we're not going to go hiking or camping this year. Oh well.

Last weekend I finally finished my workbench and adding a few circuits to the basement for said workbench. Emily took a bunch of pictures, which I am dutifully reproducing here:

Squirrely got into some cobwebs while down in the basement.