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Cars I’ve Loved

I like cars. Specifically, I like fast cars. It goes without saying, therefore, that I’ve never really owned one, because if I did I would be imprison’d and/or dead. But because I’m, frankly, reaching for ideas today (24 hours until GO BABY), here is a list of cars that I’ve had. (Not necessarily owned, but cars for which I have been the primary driver.)

The Barge
1972 Pontiac Grand Ville. This was my “first,” the car I drove almost exclusively after I got my license in 1994. We called it “The Barge,” because it is quite literally the largest sedan I’ve ever seen. It handled like a sponge, but had a HUGE engine and could hustle. It lasted until early 1996, my senior year, when the engine problems finally killed it, and my dad sold it to a guy who wanted to take the massive 454 engine block, rebuild it, and put it in a GTO. I still have dreams in which I’m driving this car.

The Benzo
1983 Mercedes Benz 240D. After The Barge died, I got to drive The Benz, off-and-on, until the end of senior year. It was a nice car, built like a tank, but it had a diesel engine with all the acceleration of a mule. Gas mileage was good, but the car would not go faster than 83 miles per hour, and it took like 3 minutes to get there. Had a nice Benz suspension, though, so it handled nice. It met a sad end in the summer of ’96, not long before I went off to college, when my sister bounced it off another car and a rock.

The Saturn
1996 Saturn SL2. My mom purchased this while I was away on Senior week in 1996, for the simple reason that I had the Benz in Rehoboth, my dad had his white Saab 9000, and Mom needed wheels. Also my sister was getting her license, so they really needed a third car again, even with me going off to school. After my 2 year sentence at Peabody Conservatory, I transferred to UD and needed a car to get to jobs/rehearsals/gigs, and my sister went off to college herself, so the Saturn was transferred to me. It was my faithful ride through three years of college, until I traded it in on my truck.

Mine was black.
2002 Ford F150. Another vehicle I dream of at least once a month; I loved this truck. I had just graduated and had my first real job, so I felt I deserved a high-end automobile; to that end, I went to the Ford dealership and had mine custom-designed. Mostly this was because I wouldn’t drive one with an automatic transmission, and apparently no dealer in the country had a V8 available with a stick, but this meant I was able to pick every option I wanted, down to the hot stereo, 4×4, color, and pimpin’ alloy wheels. It was a fantastic truck, but after a while, gas prices were going way up, and my wife was having to drive all over the state for her job in a rapidly aging Mazda. So, we traded in the truck for a brand-new Honda Accord, and I started driving Sarah’s old car.

Izzy
1998 Mazda Protege. This car served us well for 10 years, by far the longest of any car we’ve had. Sarah got it in late 1997 when she was driving down to see me at Peabody every few weeks, and continued to be the primary driver until I took it over in 2005. It was cramped, underpowered, automatic transmission’d, and handled like a lawnmower. Sarah was sad to see it go, but when I got my hands on the Saab, we gave it to a car donation company, who sold it and gave the proceeds to the Choir School.

Current Whip
1997 Saab 9000 CSE Turbo. Actually an older car than the Mazda I gave up for it, but manifestly bigger, and faster. Also safer; it’s got airbags all over the place, and weighs nearly as much as my truck did. Plus it’s a stick-shift, so I feel like a man again. I managed to acquire it through the benevolence of my father; he bought my mom a new car a while back, but wasn’t offered a significant amount in trade-in, so he kept both his Saabs, the 9000 as the daily commuter, and the 900 convertible as his “man about town” car. When he started working from home, he no longer needed a commuter car, and donated it to, um, me. EPIC WIN!

Those are my cars. What do you be drivin’?

Malaria v. Swine Flu

For those of us who are tired of hearing about Swine Flu and how it’s a global frickin’ pandemic (thanks, cable news!), GraphJam comes to the rescue:

10%

Go Maine!

If you ignore the fact that the federal government still refuses to recognize gay marriage, 5 out of 50 states now allow it (plus the District of Columbia). We’re getting there, people. We totally are. Sadly, Delaware may take a little while, but at least last month the General Assembly shot down a constitutional amendment to ban civil marriage, so my home state’s not entirely bass ackwards.

Ew

Antibiotics suck. Not only is Charles still fighting an ear infection, the Amoxycillin gave him a yeast infection on his, um…how shall I put this? On his nards. His berries. His junk. This is absolutely something we wanted to be worrying about 4 days before having our second child.

The in-laws were kind enough to take him to the doctor on Monday, who diagnosed his various ailments and gave him a different antibiotic (hopefully one that won’t give him explosive diahrrea, another fun side-effect of the Amoxycillin), along with a topical cream for Dong and The Twins (Alphonse and Mortescue, he calls them (not really)). It seems to be doing the job, but the challenge is to get him to take the medicine, because even with grape flavoring, it mainly tastes like nasty cough syrup and just a wee soupçon of brake fluid. Also any ministrations directed at his groin are met with resistance, defined as “a lot of screaming and flailing of legs,” which means that every time I put the ointment on his Wang and the Chungs, I get kicked in the head. Repeatedly.

For those of you that aren’t parents, this is what being a father is like: every day, your offspring will do something so unbelievably cute that you can barely stand it. Also, every day, you’re going to have to do something gross like put lotion on your son’s balls. That is parenting, in a nutshell.

Dinoremix

Go to Dinoremix, and make your own remixes of, you guessed it, Dinosaur Comics! I did not make this one, but it is my favorite. I did, however, make the one below, but it’s not as good. Make your own goodies and post the results in comments! Both of you! Do it!

Joey Joe is ready

This, this right here, is why the Onion is the best news source available for any topic, from politics to sports to sex (AKA “nooky”).

::drools::

Oh heck yes:

The Bacone
A bacon cone filled with scrambled eggs and country gravy topped with a biscuit.

OMG CHECK IT OUT

I’m in love.

Just like George Will!

A conservative blogger shows the usual right-wing class. (Warning: very naughty words.)

Go away

I am so tired of the rain that I may do an Anti-Rain Dance. I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but I think it will entail drinking a crapload of Olde Fenestre while shaking my fist at the sky and yelling “Thank you God! Thank you so bloody much!“

Phillies games keep getting rained out, I can’t mow my knee-high grass, and worst of all, Charles has SERIOUS cabin fever and is bored as all get-out. (Actually, if you ask him, “Charles, are you bored?” He replies, “No, I’m a little boy.) It looks like Thursday is going to be nice, so Charles and I are planning to hit the Flower Market for one last fun evening before the baby comes, so obviously the baby will probably come early because, based on the insane acrobatics she does inside my wife’s torso, my daughter is a saucy wench.

After Thursday, of course, it’s going to rain some more, except for Mother’s Day, which is fantastic except that we’ll be in hospital enjoying hospitality. On the plus side, the lawn is growing nicely, except that I have no idea when I’ll have time to cut it, so I’m sure I’ll get to it after the baby comes and it will be 17 inches high. Unless the neighbors complain, and the county comes to do it and bills me, which if the price is reasonable may become my means of lawn maintenance for the summer.

Regrets

Let’s kick off the day with Texts From Last Night, a place which archives texts that people would probably regret sending, and almost certainly regret seeing on the interwebs. Warning: very bad words, along with some pretty raunchy sexy thangs. If you’re, like, a prude, I’d not click.

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