kmusser

Outside my front door:

( picture )

For the record I'm 674 miles, 10 hours 49 minutes from my childhood home.

1)Post these rules and all the items below in your LJ
2)Bold or otherwise highlight the ones that you have already done.
3)Italicize the ones that you want to do but haven't yet.
4)Add to the bottom of the list some things that you have done that you think
that everyone should try at least once

( The list )

and I'm headed for Iceland! Take a look.

Or as seen in metaquotes: Karl, the storm that is a little confused about what constitutes tropical.

We just had a couple touch down a few miles west for us - headed NW. Another has touched down to the east and is headed our way.

zammis saw one from her place that touched down near Route 28, she's fine, though is without power for the moment.

Edit: We're fine, though my Internet connection got knocked out for a day. Saw some tornado damage near the Brunswick highway exit. Meanwhile had a lovely time at Faire this weekend.

1. Which era were you supposed to have been born into, and why?

I think I was just about 20 years too late, would've made such a good flower child.

2. You've finally been apprehended after your year-long nun-killing spree - what is your last meal on death row, and what song do you have playing through your headphones as the switch is flicked?

Last meal: Pizza
Last song: Happy Phantom by Tori

( More silly questions )

zammis on why I make a lousy Goth: "Your soul is about as dark as Disney World in July."

Go and google zammis. zammis wins!

My somewhat contradictory criteria:

Size should be a small sedan (as small as possible while still holding 4 people comfortably and have enough storage that I can use it for camping trips).

It should be as environmentally friendly as possible – I won’t consider anything getting less than 35 mpg on the highway.

It should be fun to drive, both in the city, and during long-distance road trips.

It should be reasonably priced – limit is approx. $25,000, obviously the cheaper the better. I get a significant discount on Fords and other Ford owned brands.

It should be reliable – the main reason I’m looking at new vs. old.


The leading contenders so far:

Toyota Prius the obvious choice on environmental factors, though it’s near the upper end of my price range. Probably would win on reliability too. Unfortunately it’s not available until the fall and I’m not sure I want to wait that long.

Ford Focus and Mazda 3, either of which could be had for about ½ the price of a Prius and would be available immediately. Focus also has super-low emissions.

VW Jetta, included because I want to compare a diesel – mpg are almost as good as the Prius and it could be converted to run on vegetable oil, which would just be cool.

I chose these cars based on reviews from http://www.edmunds.com/ and http://www.autoweb.com/ - all rave reviews from both sites. I plan to go out for test drives in all of these in the next couple of weeks. Driving will probably be the deciding factor. I’m not going to buy something I don’t like driving.

So comments from the peanut gallery? Any opinions on these cars? Any other cars I’m really missing out on that I should be including in here?

One of the obvious contenders, the Honda Civic, is not included because I already know what it’s like to drive it and I’d like something better (or at least the same, in which case the Ford or Mazda would win on price).

Hey, cool autumncat caught a picture of me and Zammis from the 2001 Day of Wrong. The rest of the pictures are worth seeing too. Day of Wrong pics start on page 10.