Smart

This is the form my middle age crisis has taken. It's literally not much to look at and completely adorable. The cutest thing about it is its gas mileage. It's supposed to average around 40 mpg, which is about twice as much as my pickup was getting.

We bought the car Friday after finally deciding that we'd had the pickup long enough. (The starter in my pickup died on my birthday earlier last week.) So we traded in the truck (a two-seater with an open trunk I wasn't really using anymore) for a more up-to-date two-seater with an enclosed storage compartment I don't mind stowing stuff in. The thing is, my dad found the pickup for us over ten years ago, so letting it go generated some emotion and a few tears on my part.

Still, I think my dad would have approved of our choice. It's going to be a great little errand vehicle. I call it my shopping cart.

Or, I could do tricks in it.




Jay Leno's review of the Smart Car:

Milestone Illuminated

Very soon, my eyes will have been in use for four decades. When I was seven, my sight swirled down the pipes in a hurry, and I was fitted with bifocals which I wore until junior high. Then I got "regular" glasses.

As of last year, I'm back in the bifocals…sans the classic, annoying lines bisecting my world, thankyouverymuch. My vision had gotten to the point where I couldn't look from far to near--to read, type, sew, knit, etc.--without feeling like my eyes were trying to adjust by screwing themselves deeper into my head.

Now, have I ever mentioned here how dark my house can be? I'm sure I have. It's a pet peeve of mine and I'm not likely to keep a peeve hidden under a bushel. No.

And surprisingly enough, bifocals don't increase light, no sir, no how. They just make the shadows sharper.  My middle-aged eyes were griping at me to speak some light into the darkness, or else. So like a good, modern consumer, I bought a lamp.



The neck of the lamp has a pretty medallion to make aging appear graceful…



And it slides up and down for height adjustment…





…The mirror in the hall caught me taking pics of the lamp. And here's the whole shebang.



I've installed an incandescent bulb in the lamp for now because I like the warm light. One day, when I'm yet another year or two older and incandescents have gone the way of rotary phones, I'll probably cave into societal realities by buying a CFL bulb. CFLs emit an ugly light, though, and I don't like them. Really, I'd like to, but I don't. Maybe I can save up for an LED bulb instead. According to what I've heard about those, one bulb may last me a couple decades. By then, I'll probably be thinking more about replacements for knees than light bulbs.

In the meantime, I can knit, quilt, and read without a headache stalking me.  Happy birthday to me.

First Week's Favorite Photo

I can't promise (read: resolve) to show a favorite photo every week during 2011, but at least I've got the first one picked out.



I finished a sweater already this year! It's a replacement for the very first sweater I finished almost four years ago when I began to knit with needles. The pattern is the Kimono Jacket from the book First Knits. Here's a less twee shot of the new sweater:



And the one to be replaced, before it became a huge fuzz ball:



I'm hoping the second sweater won't pill horribly. It's knit with Cascade Eco Wool, and the first sweater is in something of lesser quality, so perhaps the maturing yarn snob in me has chosen something better this time around.