Friday, March 19, 2004

 
Wheeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

I just bought a car! Wow! It's a 2002 Hyundai Accent, dark grey, 2 doors, manual transmission, 20K miles, and gets about 40mpg on the highway. It's in great shape, it handles wonderfully, and it's soooo zippy! I didn't realize how much I enjoy driving a manual transmission. (Of course, this car is a far cry from the 1971 VW Superbeetle I started out in!) The dealership experience was rather excruciating, and I of course spent more than I had anticipated (and it wasn't even what I was looking for), but I got it for a fabulous price. It's still got 40,000 miles left on the factory warranty, and it's less than 2 years old, so it shouldn't have any problems for quite a while. I was a little down about the whole thing by the time the whole negotiation process was finished (I almost didn't buy the thing, but Hugo worked it out pretty well for me), but by the time I'd rounded the first bend up the hill to Hugo's house I was happy. Now I just have to sell Sylvia for a decent price so I can justify having a new car. :} This car is so fun! I'll take pictures tomorrow and post them, and take suggestions for suitable names. :)
# posted by Lacey 8:59 PM

Thursday, March 18, 2004

 
Vacation Time!

Finished my last final this morning, so I'm on Spring Break now -- hooray! It's hard to believe that my first quarter at PSU is over already. It's been a good quarter all in all, but it'll be nice to have a week off. I spent much of this afternoon cleaning up Sylvia (my lovely truck) in the hopes of selling her in the near future so I can buy a small car that gets better mileage. It's funny, when I spoke with a guy who was interested in coming over to look at it, I admitted to the cosmetic damage, saying something like "yeah, it's got a few dents and scrapes, and a bit of rust at the top of the cab." I honestly thought I was telling the truth, but I realized when I was washing her this afternoon that she's really pretty beat up all around. Lots more scratches and scrapes than I realized, and quite a bit more rust. And the jet washer I used unfortunately accelerated the peeling process around some of the rust spots. So she's not very pretty, but I still love her anyway. And I did advertise her as a "work truck" and warned that she's not cosmetically beautiful. :} So far I've only advertised her on Craigslist, because the Oregonian ads cost about $50 for the weekend, which is the best time, and she's not quite worth that at this point. I think somebody is coming around to look at her tomorrow morning, so we'll see how that goes.

Morris practice went really well tonight. We actually managed to run through quite a few dances with minimal review, which is great. Especially since we're dancing at the Pagan Faire on Saturday, and at the Rose Schnitzer Manor (an assisted living facility) next Thursday. Gigs are always good motivators for serious practice. :) And we had exactly 12 dancers for most of practice tonight, so we had a perfect two sets so everybody got to practice everything. I like it when practices happen like that. :) On a slightly related and random fun note, I've also been tagging along to Bridgetown practice for the last few weeks (except last night because I had to study). There's no way around it, I just like dancing with the men. (But haven't I always played with boys?) :)

Off to bed now. I need a good night's sleep to start off my vacation. :P
# posted by Lacey 10:47 PM

Monday, March 15, 2004

 
Happy Birthday, Hugo!

Enough said. :)
# posted by Lacey 11:42 AM

Sunday, March 14, 2004

 
Random chance and happenstance

Well, this story is kind of old, but I haven't blogged for a while, so I have to catch up. ... After dropping Ellie off at her piano lesson last weekend, Hugo and I stopped by the Safeway across the street from the piano school to do some grocery shopping. I've never actually been in this store before, and probably won't be going there very often in the future, which makes the following occurence even more coincidental than it might otherwise have been. While wandering the aisles looking for something or other, we passed a man pushing a stroller with a boy in it. The boy looked very much like his father, and the father looked very much like somebody I knew. I did a quick double-take, told myself it was impossible, then did a triple-take when I heard the man's voice. I still told myself it was impossible, and turned the other way down the aisle. However, curiosity got the best of me, and I accosted the man and his wife as they left the store, saying, "Excuse me, but you didn't, by any chance, used to teach at a high school in Santa Cruz, did you?" It turns out that I was right -- I had met Dennis McLain, my US Government teacher (for one semester) from Soquel High! Turns out he moved up to Beaverton about the same time I did, and has been enjoying it almost as much as I am. I was pretty surprised that he remembered me. I had to remind him of my name, of course, but he said he had done a double-take on me as well, and commented, "You had longer hair back then." So he actually did remember me as an individual, not just a random student from the past. Anyway, that was kind of cool. I like it when funny, completely unexpected things like that happen.

Happy Birthday to Robbie yesterday, and Happy Birthday to Hugo tomorrow!
# posted by Lacey 4:10 PM