Unprivatized a couple of entries from last month. Nothing revelatory; just the usual drivel. Many times I post a sentence or two in a private entry to remind myself to return later and flesh out the thought, but just as often it doesn’t happen, or at least doesn’t happen in a timely manner. Ah well.<\/p>\n
Web design was quite busy for a while, and it occupied the time in my evening, sitting here in bed next to my sleeping wife, usually reserved for journaling. Business has tapered off lately, so I’m going to try to post more, with the eventual goal being to try to strike some sort of balance where I’m not all bent out of shape if I don’t post every day, but I don’t go too<\/em> long without recording something someone might consider of value.<\/p>\n Another element conspiring against my hoped-for prolific-ness is my diversity of interests. One day it’s traveling overseas, another day it’s getting back in flying, the next day it’ll be really focusing on my guitar playing, then it’ll be astronomy and space exploration, after that’s it’s tweaking our website, and so on… It’s not an ideal state of affairs, and I should point out that all these interests are in effect the "icing on the cake" of investment in my wife and kids and home life here–without a doubt the most important "interest," if you can even call it that. Everything else comes second or lower. If there’s time available for a more icing-like interest, great; if not, that’s fine too. Loose hands.<\/p>\n Lately, however, it’s been cars again. I introduced Diane to Top Gear<\/em><\/a> last year and to my surprise and delight she totally loves the show. We had a few seasons on DVD, and this past spring there were many weeks in which we’d watch one a night, just about. As one might expect, it had the side effect of really rekindling my latent passion for all thing automotive, and if we’re honest with ourselves, one of the eventual results was our purchase of the minivan a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n If you’ve been reading my journal for any length of time you know that I have a real weakness for project cars<\/a>, especially from the ’80s and early ’90s (most of them are at the bottom of their depreciation curves so it works out well). After buying the minivan, we had three cars, and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to sell one, bide my time with the cash in hand, waiting for the right car to come along, driving the other car in the meantime, and snapup a good example once it came along, selling the remaining car once that purchase was complete. I talked it over with Diane and she was mostly okay with the idea, her only real stipulation being that she’d like it to have four doors so that it could be used more easily as a family car, in a pinch.<\/p>\n I went through a labyrinthine series of decisions, settling on one car, then another, deciding to keep one of our existing cars after all, then the other, and back again. It was exhausting in more ways that one. Initially I had my heart set on a late-’80s BMW 3-series (E30)<\/a>, stickshift, but for divers reasons that didn’t pan out, then I was very interested in a rarer version of the Volvo we currently own, the 780<\/a> (our is a 940 Turbo). That plan didn’t work either, and the end result of it all is that I’ve decided to keep our Volvo and I sold Diane’s old car, a Saturn station wagon. So we’re down to two cars again.<\/p>\n I have to say, though, I’m still holding out for that 780, one day when our debt has been driven down a bit and the dust has settled in other ways. It’s boxy, yes, but the proportions are exactly right for me–the balance of visual masses, especially from the side, is perfect, and it’s comfortable and something special (only 5600 of them were imported to the US). And mechanically it’s almost identical to our 940 (rear-wheel-drive), so that’s a known quantity. They’re all automatics, but a manual swap can be done, and it’s not terribly expensive. Diane was even a fan of it, calling it "academic-looking" and "pretty." I would be quite happy commuting to work in one of those.<\/p>\n But for now, I’m resolved to be content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Unprivatized a couple of entries from last month. Nothing revelatory; just the usual drivel. Many times I post a sentence or two in a private entry to remind myself to return later and flesh out the thought, but just as often it doesn’t happen, or at least doesn’t happen in a timely manner. Ah well. 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