the world's most expensive lunch date

Don't ever let my husband take you out for lunch....you'll end up buying a brand new car for him! That's what happened to me yesterday. Corey's been virtual car shopping for months now, and yesterday since we happened to be at the Olive Garden near Rt 1, I suggested that we stop in at Pontiac and check out any offers they might have. They just happened to have exactly the car he wanted: A black 2008 Pontiac G8 GT at exactly the right price for our budget. Holy cow. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. It was the easiest and fastest new car buying process I've ever been involved in. We negotiated for about 20 minutes and two hours later, we were leaving with the Pontiac. So long old big black car, hello new, big black car!

I don't have any pictures of the new big black car yet, so I had to make do with stuff from the pontiac website. Obviously, we do not live near any mountains :)

Nor was it raining yesterday. But this will give you an idea of what his new car looks like.

Here's the real surprise: I actually like this car. The Monte Carlo was like driving a tank, and the darn doors were ginormous and heavy. The only thing I'll miss about that car is its sunroof. This car is way fun to drive, and I loooooove the headlights. They're probably blinding to oncoming motorists, but I can actually see in the night!! A major improvement over my usual squinting through the gloom.

Snow Day!

So after the sump pump episode, more things happened: I tried to use my steam mop to clean the hardwood floor in the living room, and managed to damage the finish on the floor. Only in one smallish area, but still: ANNOYING, considering I cherish our hardwood floors. Me and my dad put a lot of work into making those floors gorgeous! Fortunately, it's fixable, and I will get to it later in the week. (Hopefully when I fix it, I won't wreck anything else in the process.) Also, the back door keeps freezing shut, which is a real pain in the neck. I am seriously tempted to use the doggie door that's set into the back door, just to save the long trek around the house when we want to go in the backyard. Milo uses the doggie door all the time anyway, why shouldn't I? ;)

Then this morning, I had forgotten that I had scheduled an oil delivery for today. The guy showed up at 8:15 or so, and I was still in my pj's and nasty old stained bathrobe, with my hair all bedhead, and teeth unbrushed. I had to go outside and open the garage door for him. He took one look at me and told me to go back inside. I said, "Well, you've already seen me, so I can't erase this picture from your brain!" Milo came out too, to chat while the oil guy was filling the tank. He was telling Brian the oil man all about how the last snow wasn't very packable, but hopefully today we would be able to build a snowman. The oil guy was probably relieved to get away from us; we would have stood there talking to him all day long.

Despite the constant perils I seem to be surrounded by, somehow, I still manage to have fun. It snowed a bit overnight, so of course, Milo and I were outside bright and early (once I was dressed and had brushed my teeth). It was oddly warm out, so we played outside for most of the morning. The snow was really interesting, just enough to make cool shapes and patterns on ordinary things, plus it had a neat frosty, fuzzy effect going on.


The big fir tree out front looked really cool with snow on it.


Closeup of snowy boughs.



Our nifty star lantern, all chiaroscuro from the snow.

The lilac tree out front, looking all fuzzy and pretty.

The fence around the patio is draped with dead morning glory vines, and made an interesting picture.

My tim burton-ish fish looking completely surreal with snow on it.

Milo built his first "medium size" snowman (as he called it). The poor thing is named Rascal and now lives in Milo's climber fort, to keep Lily from eating it. We had made an even smaller pathetic snowman last week, but Milo stomped on that one.

Isn't Rascal awesome?? I have to ask you that, because Milo must have said that to me at least 20 times while I was painstakingly rolling those tiny snowballs through the miniscule accumulation of snow.