Beauty School Dropout: “Oh my gosh! How cool is that?! I squealed ‘I’m famous’ to my husband (since he thinks the whole knitting/blogging/Ravelry thing is a bit much), then Cindy and I introduced ourselves, and proceeded to talk yarn and our LYS, Simply Fibers.”

It’s 2008 and it’s time I got a new car. We picked up a new Honda Fit Sport from the local Honda dealership yesterday. It’s a fantastic car with all of the things I’ve been looking for: inexpensive to maintain, reliable, practical, more usable space and fun to drive.

Here’s a picture from the Honda webiste.

The Sport model comes with some cool add-ons like fog lights, spoilers at the front and above the hatch, an upgraded stereo with a port to connect your iPod and aluminum wheels. This particular car had some dealer added options like floor mats, cargo tray and bumper protector plus wheel locks.

The hardest part was making the decision to leave the old car behind. It still pulls at my heart as I write this. The 1996 Honda Civic that I drove everyday was the first purchase that Tammy I and made as a married couple. The car was 110% of what we expected. It consistently got 30-35MPG from the first tank to the last. Parts and labor to replace things were inexpensive and far between. The most expensive thing we did was replace the timing belt and water pump and we did that only because I was concerned about the age–11 years since new.

Change is sometimes hard for me, especially when there are emotions attached. The Civic had become more than a car. It became a symbol of our marriage and like a wedding ring, it’s not the kind of thing that’s easily replaced.

Goodbye Civic. You’ll be missed.

Hello Fit! Welcome to the family.

I hope everyone had a safe New Year’s Eve and that they have a great 2008.

From here to there and back: “Please stop. You have now written the same book three times. I read Tuesdays with Morrie, and it was OK. You followed up with The Five People You Meet in Heaven (which I read while sitting in my local Barnes and Noble in about 20 minutes – and those are 20 minutes I’ll never see again), and now you have this schlock you are calling For One More Day, the movie version of which is taking up valuable air time on my television this very evening.”

My grandmother Rosalyn Hart died on November 9th and her memorial service is today. The picture above was taken in the early 1980’s at my grandparent’s house in Stotts City, MO, a place that we’ve all come to call special. Of all of the photos I’ve seen of Rosalyn in the last few years, this older photo says the most about her. She was a family person, quick with a smile for nearly any occasion, an avid reader and loved a good spy novel. It was my grandmother who got me hooked on [Clive Cussler](http://www.numa.net/clive_cussler.html) novels, reading copies from the local library in a hammock on summer nights.

From more than anyone before my wife, I learned about music from my grandparents. While Bob took a classic and “be bop” jazz approach, Rosalyn had more modern tastes. She encouraged me to listen to newer artists and be muscially open-minded.

Goodbye, Grandma. You’ll be dearly missed.

I made a mistake today while driving home from work. I stopped short of an intersection to let another car in to traffic. The traffic in front of me was stopped and had little hope of moving within a couple of minutes. The minivan was trying to enter from the side street, one typically jammed with traffic during the end-of-day rush hour.

I broke my own rule.

I *never* let people out from side streets because of what happened next. From far behind me in traffic, a driver decided that they couldn’t wait for the normal flow of traffic. They pulled in to the center “turn” lane and proceeded the 300-500 feet to my intersection, accelerating in order to make the left turn signal only 500 more feet to my north.

In the meantime, the nice lady that I let out in front of me failed to see the rapidly oncoming car (moving at nearly 40MPH by this point) because she was looking for traffic coming for the right. My eye moved to the expected impact point, wincing as part of the process. It was a near miss.

I won’t soon forget the mental snapshot. The speeding car was a light metallic green 1996 Honda Accord 4 door that served quickly to the left, then right, dodging the nose of the 2007 Chrysler Pacifica. The distance separating the cars was no more than 12 inches. Watching the cars pass at that close of a distance was shocking. I immediately turned to the person in the driver’s seat of the Pacifica and realized that she had not realized the danger. Her car was still creeping ahead during the incident and her expression (and body language) did not change until the car passed into her field of vision. Remember, she was looking to the right and from her perspective, the danger car was passing from left to right.

She was 12 inches from disaster and didn’t know it until the danger passed. The thought was sobering. How many times in your life do you let your awareness of your environment pass without a thought? For that matter, how many times each day are you moving without thinking?

Driving a car always requires attention, no matter what you tell yourself and no matter what the circumstances. While no-one was hurt, the incident served its purpose and reminded me of the dangers in everyday life. Don’t wait for an accident to remind you.

I haven’t written in awhile and a lot of that has to do with real life getting in the way. I spend a fair amount of my day in front of a keyboard and a screen, typing and mousing for a living. Sometimes, the very last thing I want to do is type.

Cool Tools: “I am a student in a masters program and read numerous texts at the same time. For years I used sticky plastic flags, but they are not reusable. These thin, folding book darts are flush with the book, and unlike the plastic flags, don’t get bent or torn out while in my book bag. They also solve the waste problem. With an order of a hundred I am able to mark all of my books with passages that I need to remember for class discussions. Once done with that class, I simply pull them out and then use them for another class.”

Kotaku: “I’m not sure what’s more soul-crushing—that someone took the effort to write a web-based Pac-Man text adventure in the style of Zork or that I just spent fifteen minutes ensuring that it adhered to the maze layout perfectly. Regardless, your semi-daily reminder that someone has far too much time on their hands is at the official Pac-Txt site.”