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….