This is only my second update of the year. I’ve been kind of contemplative and quiet the first couple of months this year. Lately, I have found that I am unable to express my thoughts about the world and my place in it… I guess it’s the mid-winter blahs and the concern that I’m wasting my life… Pretty heavy stuff to think about while brushing your teeth at 530 in the morning….

To catch everyone up, so far this year, I have accomplished or done a couple of “big” things… project things, if you will. We took a vacation to South Florida in January to see Janel’s parents and brother, and we also got to do some Disney/Universal stuff in Orlando… We have pictures, but I haven’t put them on Flickr yet… to be honest, I don’t even have a Flickr account yet… (note to self)…

After returning, I started looking into buying a new vehicle for Janel after she told me that the sun visor had fallen out of the ceiling of the wondermobile (the Kia Sportage, for those of you who don’t know). We talked about what she would like to drive instead, and I did copious amounts of research (as I always do when making any purchase… thank God for the interwebs…) and we looked at the Saturn Vue(meh), Chevy Equinox (yawn) and HHR (small), Ford Escape (bleh), and finally the Nissan Xterra. I could tell when Janel got behind the wheel of the Xterra, that this was the one we would be making a deal for. So, we started talking with the salesman about 4 pm on a Thursday, haggled for 5 hours, and walked out the door with a 2006 black Xterra X that was within our budget… we also managed to get $1,500 for the Krappy Kia… not a bad deal, considering… anyway, Janel and I were a united front against the salesman… and the funniest thing to me was his ability to “hear” only certain aspects of what the customer is saying… He asked us numerous times “What is it gonna take to make this deal.” We named a price, and he says, “Well, what’s it gonna take?” … The other humorous thing was that he kept getting “called” into the sales manager’s office at various points during the negotiations. I was ready to walk out, but was worried that Janel would not like me making a “scene.” As it turns out, she was ready to walk with me at the same point, but the salesman must have sensed the tension and came back with a much more reasonable offer.

Anyway, Janel loves her new car, and it is really fun to drive… the engine is the same as in the new Nissan Z sportcar, only the stroke was lengthened to make it a 4.0 with 265 hp… it moves when you push down the gas… My 4 cylinder truck seems so much MORE wimpy now… hahaha… but I still get better gas mileage…

Otherwise, last week I was sick with bronchitis and ran a 102 degree fever for 4 days… finally made it back to work on Friday, but slept much of the weekend… Apparently, that was needed too, as I felt so much better by Monday.

That’s it for now….