Car Fever
Okay, so I’ve had car fever since the blasted auto show on Saturday, so in hopes of assuaging the Gods of Capitalism, I’ve weaned myself down from wanting to buy a new Toyota Tacoma:
(I will have one of these puppies one day, folks: Utterly reliable, simple, easy-to-work-on, efficient, and still with that simple truck image. These little workhorses aren’t poseurs. They need to make ’em with a diesel engine from their European Yaris. Imagine, a little workhorse like this getting 40 mpg, with gobs of torque)
To a new iBook / Powerbook (can’t DECIDE!!)
(Same disclaimer: I want one, but I can’t justify one. They’re overpriced, but even used ones on ebay run $1k or more.)
to a rice cooker.
That’s $15k down to $30 folks. That’s pretty darn good :)
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Yes, yes, I’m gadget crazy: I’ve got a manual-drip coffee system, an iPod, a Palm TungstenT, the Nikon you see below, and now a rice maker. (And a kickass Rowenta iron, if you want to get technical about it). Plus, accoutrements for my Car aplenty. But hey, you can’t take it with you, I save like 50% of my take-home pay as it is, between my 401(k) and savings account. If I want to blow a little money, so be it…
What’s the lesson here? Don’t let Harold see 500 cars in 2 hours. Hilarity will result.
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Oh, why a rice cooker, you ask? Simple: Whitney & I went to a very nice Japanese restaurant on Hurstborne Lane on Sunday afternoon & stuffed ourselves with Steak Teriyaki and Chicken Teriyaki, plus sushi. They also gave us hand-sized bowls of sweet, sticky rice that was easy to eat w/chopsticks.
“Wow…I’ve never had rice like this!” I said.
“Get good rice and a rice cooker” she said. So, like my coffee kick, I think I’m going on a rice kick. I mean, heck, it’s cheap, it’s filling, it’s healthy, it keeps like 3 Billion people alive every day. Where’s the downside? Apparently with one of these little things you get perfect rice every time, and it keeps it at perfect temperature for like 5 hours afterwards. Going to have to ask around @ work to see where all my Asian co-workers get their rice for cheap :)
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I’ve put in to take Friday off. What with my upcoming work at the Breathitt County Library on Saturday and the autocross on Sunday, I’m swamped, and besides, I haven’t had a day off since the first of the year, and it seems like a good time.
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Also, apparently, the CompSci department at Georgetown College is in steep decline. The only full-time professor’s left for greener pastures @ Centre (where no doubt they’ll give him lots of funding & support), and all that’s left is the one mediocre associate prof and some temps (hey, maybe they need ME to teach? I could do a really good semester on software engineering in the real world). And to beat it all: Prof. Crawley’s coming back in the fall….