automanic

Wednesday evening, as I had reported, I reconnected with an old friend at Craig's pre-Europe trip get-together. I was telling her about my car woes, my pending decision to buy a new car, and my continued sense--first noted in one of my comments on Gene's journal--that my choice will be between the MINI Cooper and the Toyota Prius. After telling me that she and her husband had bought a Saab, which is what I also currently own, she said that they too had looked at the MINI, and she was urging me to get one; also encouraging style over function, W-- at work has been encouraging the MINI over the Prius as well.

When I got home that night, there was a note in my mailbox that a package had been delivered, but the concierge was making his security rounds at that time, so I wasn't able to pick it up from the front desk. I stopped downstairs Friday morning on the way to work and picked up the package, which was from Roger; he had told me he was going to send me some video of his and Raymond's trip to Long Beach and Disneyland, and of Raymond's most recent concert, and that he had put in "some extras." The box contained three video tapes, a music CD of the Jekyll and Hyde soundtrack, another MP3 CD of a variety of music, a pin of a cute animated Disney guy (especially interesting given Roger hadn't even read my Audblog entry about my attraction to animated hotties)... and a 1:32 IR remote control scale model of a MINI Cooper, with which Alex and I have had a lot of fun playing.

I had first assumed that if I bought a MINI, I would get it in green, my favorite color. But there's been a yellow one in the parking lot at work, which looks particularly sweet and has more of an impact than the green; the model that Roger sent also was yellow.

In the meantime, Craig offered to lend me his car--a Hyundai Santa Fe--while he's away in Europe. He dropped it by Friday evening, and I drove him to the airport. I had planned to drive it out to the MINI dealer yesterday, but in addition to another day of bad weather outside, I was feeling under-the-weather inside--with a headache, earache, sore throat and fatigue all day-- so I stayed in and rested. Perhaps next weekend I'll finally get to take a test drive in a MINI.

Craig joked that he wants to get me hooked on his SUV so that I'll join the ranks of the gas guzzlers. To be fair, the Santa Fe's gas mileage actually is pretty good, almost as good as my Saab. And while there are aspects of the ride I quite like, including being up higher on the road and the amount of room, after taking it Friday evening to the airport and today to church, I find that I'm feeling rather uncomfortable and hypocritical driving and being seen in an SUV. So the Santa Fe hasn't supplanted the MINI or the Prius.