My New Ride

Friday was the day Tim and I have been working toward for months—it was the day we got a new car to replace the one I crashed. We had originally figured we’d get a 4 door Hyundai Accent GLS, only to find that the 2006 model is sold out, and the 2007s won’t be out for a while. So that left us with the possibility of getting a 3 door (hatchback) Accent, getting another Elantra, or considering an entirely different car. But we did want to stick with Hyundai, so we did some test driving and I found that I really liked the 3 door Accent. And the gas mileage on those is pretty attractive, too. We looked at the GS and SE models, and while the GS would have been cheaper, the SE was just nicer. I know it sounds lazy, but do I really want to crank my windows open? Not anymore—I’ve done that in previous vehicles and it was fine, but since then I’ve spent enough time in cars with power windows to have come to appreciate the convenience. Besides, the SE came with better wheels and brakes, standard AC, and a CD player, among other features. Enough to be worth the extra expense.

So now I have my beautiful new charcoal gray Accent and today I took it to work for the first time. This is going to be great for both Tim and me because now our schedules aren’t tied to each other. I no longer have to get up at 5 am to take Tim to work, and he no longer has to wait for me when I’m late. Of course now we have to finish paying off the car, but that won’t be so bad—yet another reason why we have chosen Hyundai.

Tim’s Silly Hat

Since finding out that there was a knitting pattern out there for Jayne’s hat (from the Firefly episode “The Message”) Tim has wanted his own. My knitting has kind of fallen by the wayside due to all the time I spend away from home with a full-time job and a long commute (though I’m still plugging away at a couple of projects), so Tim asked Tara if she would knit one for him. Even though she’s working on several sweaters, she managed to pull one together for Tim and brought it to the bowling alley a couple of weeks ago. We all took turns bowling with the cap on, including a member of the opposing team, and while it didn’t help us bowl better, it made us laugh.

According to Wash, “A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he's not afraid of anything.”

Arizona Skies

One of the best things about living here is the sky—the colors it takes on are amazing and impossible to describe. I realize that these pictures will not do the sky over Arizona any real justice, but I thought they were still worth posting. They were all taken from our backyard—even with the walls and the houses around us, the views are great. I took the first one because I was impressed with how half the sky was lit and half was not. The other two were taken a few days later, when the clouds had taken on a variety of shades of pink.

Black Widows

Tonight was my first encounter with a black widow. I already knew we had them living around us, but hadn’t actually seen one. Well, actually we may have had one in the garage a couple of months ago, but Tim didn’t wait to get confirmation and killed it. Just now I went out to take the trash bin to the curb, and saw a suspicious-looking spider moving around its web outside our front door. While the light out there wasn’t too bright, I saw it had some red markings, and so I called Tim out and we looked at it together. We noticed it had the telltale red hourglass shape on the ventral side of its abdomen. So Tim killed it. Part of me felt bad, as I’m more of the live-and-let-live mentality, but on the other hand I don’t want black widows reproducing all over the place. And I certainly don’t want Lena getting bit when I take her outdoors because I’m not sure how cats fare when injected with black widow neurotoxins. In reading more about black widows I have found out that they are not that dangerous to humans, though you can have unpleasant side-effects from the bite. And because of the occasional more serious complications you really don’t want to risk getting bit if you can help it. It still does not sound as bad as a brown recluse bite—those are just downright disgusting and if you should want to see any pictures, there are plenty on the internet.