Roo's Ramblings

As I mentioned, the hubby and I bought a new car. The old one, a 1999 Subaru Forester, was really beginning to show its age. The suspension was having problems, the Check engine light was stuck on (bad sensor, $450 to replace) and it had developed a noise that made me seriously believe there was something very wrong in the back end. Even the hubby agreed it was time to get a new one.

I loved my Forester, so the plan was simple - go back to the same dealership and get another one. Being penny-pinching geeks, we did a lot of research. We paid for reports letting us know the dealership cost of everything. We read reviews. We debated various packages and add-ons. And we put together exactly what we wanted and figured out the price, and then debated how much we would be willing to pay over that. We had decided to go back to our original dealership because we'd had all of the work on the Forester done there, so they had great records. We hoped this would get us a better trade-in. The blue book value was around $2500K, and equivalent cars (without the Check Engine light issue) were selling locally for $5K or so at used car lots. The last time we did this we had to wait around 30 days for it to be shipped from Japan, so we also decided on what features were non-negotiable and what we'd be willing to settle for off the lot, if it came to that. Also, just to get a second option, I went with both the Costco and Consumer Reports car buying club thingies. Both have agreements with various dealerships to get bargains for members. One dealership, on the completely wrong side of town, was part of both, so we decided to use them as our second opinion to see if they would give us a better deal.

The day came. We drove to our usual dealership. We went in and looked at the new Forester and....it's bigger. It looks way bigger. It looks a lot like the Ford Explorer these days. I felt like I was sitting in a land barge. Did not want. After all that research, and all those pictures (which really didn't show the scale of the new model), I didn't much like it. Nor did the hubby. We wanted a boxy station wagon, but the Forester has morphed into a real SUV. On the showroom floor, right next to the Forester, was a cute little Crosstrek hybrid. For less than the Forester we'd decided upon. I ended up taking one for a test drive and liked it (after being encouraged by the hubby, which is very out of character for him). But we hadn't done any research. We knew nothing about the Crosstrek. I'd seen a few sprouting in our neighborhood and had absently noticed that they were cute, but that's it. We got some advertising info on it and discussed it with the sales guy, who said we could do a custom order but it would be a minimum of 16 weeks. They were having trouble keeping the Crosstreks on the lot, especially the hybrids. It was kind of high pressure, which we didn't much care for. Then they came back with their offer for our car - $1K. This was a non-starter. It seriously pissed off the husband. And freaked me out, because one of the problems they cited were unsafe brakes that needed to be replaced immediately. I'd been there less than a month earlier asking about the issues with my squeaking brakes and was reassured for the third time that they were fine and would last a year or two.

We left. We drove all the way across town to the second dealership, feeling conflicted. The car we thought we wanted, we didn't. We liked the Crosstrek but knew nothing about it. The dealership that we had trusted had let us down. We decided to test drive an Impreza, just because what the heck, but didn't much like it. The second dealership confirmed the 16+ week long wait for factory orders. We were much depressed. And then, we spotted a plasma green hybrid Crosstrek in the lot. We asked to look at it. It had most of the features we wanted. So....somehow, we bought it. I'm still a bit fuzzy on how that happened. Anyone who knows my husband would be so shocked by him making an impulse purchase of this magnitude that they'd probably insist on having his head checked for injuries. But he agreed to it. We had a few upgrades done, talked financing, and left in a daze. This was Saturday. It would be ready for us on Wednesday.

We went home and did research. The Crosstrek seems to be solid - it's basically a reboot of the Outback Sport. The hybrid uses Toyota technology. It was mocked by many as being for people who want to drive to the grocery over bad roads, as opposed to real off-roaders, but that's exactly what we wanted it for. The street between us and the grocery looked like a moonscape this winter. In general, it seemed to have been a conservative, solid choice that works with our lifestyle.

So, we have a Subaru Crosstrek hybrid in plasma green. We got it for $4K below the dealer invoices thanks to Costco, and we also got 0% 3 year financing and $2K for the trade-in.

I'm still feeling a bit conflicted. I do love a number of the new features, but I haven't bonded with it like I did my Forester. Probably because the car before the Forester was from hell, and I probably would have bonded with a Yugo after that debacle. I also feel like it won't last as long as the Forester because of all of the whiz-bang electronics. I really hate the leather seats - the hubby used to swear by them but I've always hated them. He's been converted. But the model we bought wasn't available with cloth seats anyway (I need to write Subaru about this - they have a hybrid that's not vegan-friendly, which seems counter-intuitive). It has less visibility than I'm used to, but is comparable with most modern sedans. The nav system is nice, as is the entertainment system. I'm really digging the back-up camera. But it has fewer cubbyholes for storage than the Forester did (as do the new models - cubbyholes must be out these days). The sun roof is nice.

I'm hoping we'll be able to sell it in 8 years or so and get a decent trade-in on it. One lesson we've learned is that if you keep the car too long, its value plummets as the cost of repairs rise. We paid around $30K for the Forester, which means it averaged out to around $1800 per year. But the last two or three years had repair bills of $2K to $3K, which pulls that cost back up. If we trade the new car in at 8 years for $15K, which doesn't seem outrageous, this means the cost of ownership would be about the same. It would also allow us to avoid (hopefully) the huge repair bills and attendant headaches. Also, it would allow us to upgrade the tech more frequently. The hubby used to get teased mercilessly by co-workers about the cassette player in the Forester.

Still not 100% sure we made the right call. But it's very pretty, and the brakes don't squeak and there are no odd noises coming from the rear end. I just wish it was easier to get into the garage.

I know there are still a few days left, and I'll probably finish at least one more. But here's what I've been reading this month.

Hello American Lady Creature: What I learned as a Woman in Qatar by Lisa L Kirchner - Overall, this was a disappointment to me. Maybe it's because I had expectations based upon the title that didn't really pan out. I was interested in this one because the hubby and I debated moving to Qatar in the late 1990s - I worked at CMU and they were recruiting staff, and his office was opening a branch over there. We spent a while talking about it, then 9/11 happened and we decided that moving to the Middle East would be a really bad idea. I expected to read about what it's like living as an American in Qatar, and how being a woman influenced life there. Unfortunately I got lots of complaints about office politics and her husband as well as her battle with infertility, which always leaves me cold. There were a few interesting details about life in Qatar, but very few. And the stories about the dogs left me actively angry. Basically, it's a story about two self-absorbed twits who are in a toxic relationship that falls about, set against a sketched backdrop of Qatar. Not what I was after. But if this is your kind of thing, you might like it.

Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America by Linda Furiya - I picked this one up on a whim. The author, an American who was born to Japanese parents (her father was an American citizen who was born here, but sent back to Japan as a child when his mother died and conscripted into the Imperial Army during WWII) and raised in Versailles Indiana, which isn't all that far from my hometown of Louisville. I found that it dragged a bit, but she grew up in the same era as me, and a lot of her stories interested me for that reason. She had to deal with casual racism, as well as her own feelings of alienation. Overall it was a good read. It contained a few recipes which I need to try before returning it to the library.

Moriarty by Alex Horowitz - This one left me conflicted. I can't say too much due to spoilers, so I'll be purposefully vague. This is the kind of book that I usually love. It's set right after the end of Conan Doyle's "The Final Problem". Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty are both dead. However, a new American criminal is looking to take over Moriarty's criminal empire, according to our narrator, Pinkerton agent Frederic Chase, who has arrived in Switzerland just as Moriarty's body is found. Chase teams up with Scotland Yard's Athelney Jones to track down this American mastermind. While the book is well-written, and while the reader can follow the clues and figure out what's going on, I personally found the ending distasteful. That's not to say that the book was bad. Just that there was something that happened at the end that I personally didn't like as a reader. Others may well love it.

Symbiont by Mira Grant - I'm going to continue the trend of not being excited. This appears not to have been my month. At any rate, Symbiont is the second book in what was originally supposed to be a duology that was abruptly turned into a trilogy. It shows. There are some major problems. The first is that our protagonists, Sal and Nathan, have about as much charisma and excitement as a pair of overcooked noodles. While it's understandable that Sal is flat (no pun intended), making her the POV character means that the books both suffered. It's even worse in this novel, which mostly seems to be spinning its wheels. Sal is captured. Sal, with some help escapes. Sal is captured again. Again, with some help, she escapes. At the end, Sal is captured. Nathan exists only to be the caring yet bland boyfriend, who sometimes infodumps several paragraphs of exposition. The villains all pretty much twirl their mustaches, although Ronnie was interesting and has potential - I think we need a book that's nothing but Tansy and Ronnie. Even worse, it's basically a zombie plague and nobody seems to really care! The zombies are just window dressing. To be honest, the only characters I really felt invested in were the dogs. And for those who worry about such things, both are fine as of the end of the book. I also worried about Joyce, from the first book, and got the impression that she was killed off in a throwaway line in this one. Hopefully Book 3 will prove me wrong.

Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine - Another mixed one. The idea was intriguing. The author and her husband decided to go for a year without buying anything except essentials to examine how consumerism shaped and affected their lives. But my first problem was that these people are rich - they have a home in rural Vermont and a condo in Brooklyn. They're not exactly typical. At one point she "cheats" and buys a shirt because it's on sale for something like $120 and she can't pass up that deal. I have never spent $120 on any item of clothing, with the exception of my wedding dress. So the fact that this woman was simultaneously sounding satisfied for not being a consumer while rattling off her name-brand expensive clothes that she was forced to wear all year rubbed me the wrong way. The second problem is that the terms of the "experiment", for lack of a better word, were way too vague. They agreed not to spend money on anything that wasn't an essential, but they never articulated what was essential or why they were doing this. Were they trying to be anti-consumer? Was it about not buying from multinational corporations? Was it about frugality? They never said, and I don't think they ever knew. They agreed to spend unlimited amounts of money on groceries, but refused to buy beer, "forcing" the husband to start brewing his own, but never articulated what led to this decision.

The part that finally broke me was these two lines: "The final shard of Body Time rosemary-mint aromatherapy soap slides down the drain. Now we'll make do with Ivory." Seriously? You can't buy Caress, or Dove, both of which are at the grocery and cheap? And why is it okay to spend $6 on a loaf of locally baked bread, but not $4 or so (based upon prices at my co-op) for locally made decent soap? If the goal is frugality, other brands will work fine. If the goal is anti-corporate, buying Ivory makes much less sense than buying something made locally. To me, those two lines distilled everything that's wrong with the book, from the vagueness to the sense of self-pity from someone who is obviously too wealthy to even perceive that she's wealthy.

Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously by Adrienne Martini - Another one I picked up on a whim. Basically, the author decided to knit a sweater that's apparently the Holy Grail for experienced knitters. The pattern is intricate and available only in a book that's out of print, and uses yarn that's long-discontinued. The book follows her as she tries getting supplies and actually knitting it while talking to various knitters and designers. It was fairly light and fluffy and easy to read. Plus she visited a couple of my local yarn stores when she came to Pittsburgh.

You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz - This one is marketed as a thriller, but it's really, IMO, chick-lit. Not a bad thing, unless you're expecting to read a thriller. But it's not bad for what it is. I don't know why, but once I got into it I found it compelling. Our protagonist, Grace, is a therapist who works mostly with couples. Over the years she's noticed that many of the women she works with saw warning signs early in their relationships but chose to ignore them. She therefore has written a book called "You Should Have Known", and is a few weeks from publication. She and her hubby, a pediatric oncologist, are rich New Yorkers. Their son attends a prestigious and expensive private school. Everything is great. Until karma bites her on the ass, because writing a book with a title like that is asking for karmic payback. Her life is pretty much destroyed and she suddenly has to pick up the pieces while wondering why she never saw it coming. Grace starts out as a fairly shallow and unlikable character, but she does grow. And while the story is fairly predictable, I found it to be an enjoyable ride.

The Girl With All the Gifts by MR Carey - First off, MR Carey is Mike Carey. For comic aficionados, the Mike Carey who wrote Lucifer. Had I known that I would have read this much sooner. But better late than never. This one was my big winner for the month. A bit predictable, but still a really good read. I won't say much more to avoid spoilers. But if you like dystopias, sci fi or horror, you may enjoy it.


So, that's it so far, with the exception of the cookbooks. We have 6+ inches of snow on the ground and I have one library book left to make it through. I'm still sick and coughing, but making slow progress toward wellness.

In my last entry I mentioned coming down with a bit of something. It appears that I underestimated my disease, or overestimated my immune system. It's now been 10 days and I'm still sick, but slowly getting better. I've been hacking up my lungs and choking on phlegm, and I haven't been able to talk since Thursday. My voice has been reduced to a croak, although I'm finally getting to the point where I just sound really hoarse and a bit croaky, as opposed to just plain croaky. I'm sleeping 12+ hours per day. The husband has been incredibly paranoid of getting this. For the record, we've agreed he gave it to me - he had been feeling yucky for a few days before I got sick. It just looks like his system fought it off better. He's still feeling kind of tired and took one sick day last week when he woke with a sore throat and headache and decided to stay in bed to be safe, but he's mostly okay.

I feel fairly pathetic. I also worry that my Fitbit is judging me. I usually average around 80K steps per week. Since getting sick, I'm down to more like 10K. You can add friends and see how you're doing compared to them. I was passed a few days ago by my friend who has bursitis, walks with a cane, and is recovering from a sprained ankle. Then I was passed by her husband, who uses an oxygen tank. It's embarrassing. But I plan to stay inside and take it easy today and tomorrow, at least. I may try a short walk on Friday, weather permitting. Whatever I caught, it's nasty. I want to get rid of it instead of relapsing.

On the positive side, I've finished some knitting projects (washcloths). I also ordered a new Kindle Fire with 64GB of storage, since I've outgrown my 16GB model. My husband, aka The Enabler, didn't blink an eye.

Well, crap. My 80+ year old neighbor is out shoveling his walk. Now I feel like a slacker.

FYI, Amazon has The Southern Vegetarian Cookbook on sale for the Kindle for $2.99 at the moment. I'm an omnivore, but really like this cookbook and would recommend it, especially at this price. Everything I've cooked from it has been a hit so far, including tofu recipes for the spousal unit. I'm working up the courage to try the waffles and fried poached eggs.