Friday, July 08, 2005

Time for another update

Well, for those that didn’t click the title link in the previous post, yes, we bought a new car. The blue XVART is gone. (Although the plates are still on the new car…) We’d had so many problems with the Saturn and the extended warranty was just about up, so it was a good time to trade it in when all the old 2005’s were going on sale as the 2006 cars come in. We bought a black Hyundai Elantra hatchback and so far are really happy with it. No problems to date, and I drove it today in pounding rain for the first time, and it handled just fine. We got a good deal on the new car, and are happy with it. Now for the fun part. We’ve got to name it! Leave any suggestions in the comments, please! I really wanted a blue car so I could keep the XVART plates, but it wasn’t meant to be if we wanted the Elantra (and we did). Our choices were black, black or black. Or cranberry if we were willing to pay for over $3000 in options we didn’t want/need… So, black it was. Still fairly basic, the only options we got were the CD player and Cruise Control. With the amount of highway driving we do, CC is a very useful thing. Our old car had 45000 miles in 27 months… and my drive to work for most of that was only 10 miles. It’s all that driving to Canada, I tell ya!

We leave for vacation in just under a month, and I can’t wait. It’ll be the first actual trip we’ve taken since we got married 10 years ago. We’ve done little weekend runs away,but they’re not the same as a real vacation. I talked to the KOA a little while ago, and our “basic cottage with kitchenette” is a little more than that! It’s got a fridge, stove, microwave, toaster and coffee maker. Camping in luxury, this is going to be. Apparently my parents stayed at the same campground last week as part of their trip to Montreal and say it was really nice. I’ll have to get more details soon from them. We’re planning to do a little hiking, a little canoeing, and a whole lot of nothing important! We’ve each got a couple of card games/small board games picked out, and lots of reading material. There’s a nice beach nearby, and evening free concerts in town so it doesn’t seem like we’ll lack for anything to do.

Now for some much more serious news. My sister’s little girl Madison has been diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis. I don’t have much more info than that right now, but if anyone wants to send any good thoughts that way, I would really appreciate it. Bonnie REALLY doesn’t want anyone calling her, even to offer condolences right now, so PLEASE, respect her request for privacy. I just wanted to send all the good thoughts her way I could right now, even if she doesn’t know. She and Shawn are still determining how they’re going to handle things, and Bonnie’s in a really rough spot right now. If you want to learn more about CF, something I've been trying to do lately, I've included a link in the title of this post to the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Please, please, please, respect Bonnie's wishes for privacy, but send all the good thoughts you can.