Instant Karma

My old Dodge Intrepid was becoming more trouble than I thought it was worth. Granted, many of the problems with that car were probably relatively inexpensive to fix but I simply was tired of working on cars. It burned oil too much and the A/C wasn’t working. The oil burning problem might be a simple fix or it may be very expensive and the A/C work most likely would have cost quite a bit. So, I decided to start shopping around for a new vehicle. Enough was enough and I had never purchased a new or per-owned vehicle from a dealership.

A few hours after visiting the Chevrolet dealership here in town I drove home with this:

I’m now the owner of a pre-owned 2008 Chevy Impala. I can’t explain the relief I feel every time I drive this car. I’m still happy that I’m in a vehicle that isn’t gobbling oil and the A/C works properly. Gas prices are finally starting to have a greater impact on my personal life - before I bought this car I drove as little as possible but now I enjoy driving more and often offer to drive when given the opportunity.

It’s a big difference from driving the aging Intrepid, which I will be giving to family to improve and use. Many of the new features have required some adjustment. For example, the Impala has an auto-headlight feature which will automatically determine which external lights need to be on. It works great most of the time though I need to manually turn on the lights when it’s raining. For the first couple of day I kept reaching down for the gear shift (where it was in the Intrepid) instead of up on the steering column.

All-in-all it’s a great car - the first car I ever purchased through a dealership.

There’s plenty that’s been happening in my life, but some of it isn’t appropriate for a blog. I received my new entertainment center around Christmas. Perhaps sometime I’ll finally get around to posting a few photos. I’ve been making music purchases via the iTunes Store from time-to-time and recently bought two albums of songs by Richard Cheese, which are very entertaining. In addition, I’ve purchased a few random songs.

I’m slowly working my way through a sci-fi series recommended by one of my brother’s. I’m not getting into it as much as he has but I still have one and half books to finish in this series and then there’s another set of books by the same author to work my way through.

The cat received an automatic feeder from the same brother. Leto hasn’t lost weight yet, but I’ve decided that’s partly because he’s still getting too much food; something evidenced by the fact that he doesn’t eat all that is dispensed and I occasionally have to empty some of the left-over cat food. He was being fed 1/4 of a cup of food three times per day but this weekend I cut out the lunch-time feeding, which is something he didn’t receive before I had the auto-feeder anyway.