Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Insomnia

I couldn't sleep last night so I lay there trying to come up with the longest word I could think of where all the letters come in alphabetical order. I came up with "almost". Can you think of a better one?

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Monday, December 7, 2009

wet car

It's raining today in Los Angeles. And I needed to drive up to Santa Clarita for a church meeting. I was worried about taking my new car in the rain because it's a soft-top convertible, and I'm still feeling over protective. But we have a friend visiting who needed to use our bigger car to do some shopping so I didn't have a choice.

I needn't have worried. Not only was the soft top perfectly fine. But it turns out my car has a feature I didn't even know it had: windshield wipers that sense the amount of water on the windshield and automatically adjust their speed. What a smart car!

Here are some other features on my new car that my eleven-year-old car didn't have and which I know consider to be absolutely indispensable, of course:

heated seats
automatic headlights
a mute button on the radio.
an outside temperature gauge
low tire pressure warning light
rear defroster that turns itself off after a minute.
In dash 6 CD changer.

And let's not forget the automatic convertible top that I can even put up and down while driving.

Oh, and it gets 43 miles per gallon on the highway.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

new library

Silver Lake has a new library: a branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. It's super close to our home - just the other side of the lake. And a gorgeous mid-century modern style building, modeled after the architectural style SIlver Lake is famous for.

I grew up going to libraries but had lately switched over to buying books, mostly because there was no nice, convenient facility. But I am ready to switch back to being a book-borrower, and as I'd watch the library slowly go up over the last couple of years I grew increasingly impatient to get started.

FInally they had the grand opening with the public officials, and then an open house day for the neighborhood. My parents happened to be in town for Thanksgiving, and being library supporters themselves we all went over to check it out. It's a gorgeous building. A good-sized community room. A small collection but it's plugged in to the entire Los Angeles Library system so everything is accessible. And the collection in the stacks is neighborhood appropriate (I noticed an extensive array of BGLT books).

I also like the modern touches. Self check out. Automatic book return (you place them on a conveyer belt and a machine process them back into the library). I put a book on hold and they notified my by email when it came in a few days later. Besides the books there are cds and DVD to borrow as well.

My car is cuter than yours

I first saw these little two seater "Smart" cars in Amsterdam and have wanted one ever since. They are adorable first of all. And they make perfect sense for urban driving. It took several years before they started selling in the US, about two years ago. I held on to my old Mazda Protege because it was paid for and running well. And I had made a vow several years ago that my next new car would be a plug-in electric.

I broke the vow. The Mazda started needing some major repairs this year: new struts, a new catalytic converter. As I got closer to needing to get it smog checked and paying for next year's registration I began to take a closer look at how worn out the car was looking. I bought it in 1999 and had put 138,000 miles on it. Plus a friend of mine bought a Smart car and seeing his made me fall in love with it again. He raved about it.

Peleg liked the idea. So on Saturday when we were out for the day we stopped by the dealership. We liked a black and white convertible. (I had hoped for a yellow one but they discontinued that color last year). The service was friendly. The price was right. It all felt good so we went for it. I came back the next day in my Mazda so they could take it as a trade-in, and I drove my new car home that evening.