White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Well, the Mrs fled the FOB to do some shopping this morning. Myself, I would rather try to gouge my own eyes out with my elbows. No, I'll leave that nonsense to the unending seas of ebbing humanity which will be over-running the local retail outlets. These people are turning Thanksgiving from a holiday of home, hearth and reflection into another dollar based gorge-fest. Christmas, Kwanza, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, President's day .. what's next? Never mind, don't answer that. I know I should just accept that the holidays of my youth are lost, but it's hard to see them die like this. In any event, once the brave souls returned from the front lines of free enterprise we found ourselves with a toboggon. Nothing to do but put it through a few test runs out in the snow.

Checked online and noticed that even though gasoline prices are going up in general, the price at the Flying J is down to 2.04$/gal. Must be a temporary upsurge because of the massive holiday travel up-tic. No problem. I've finally come to terms with the existing prices and the Mrs has agreed that we will probably not find ourselves a nice little TDI VW as her primary car. Now, of all things, we are looking at the Ford Escape Hybrid. It gets better mileage than my SuperSaturn and even better with city traffic. The 4wd gets about 2-3 mpg less than the automatic 2wd and costs about $2.5K more so we'll have to see what our budget will tolerate. I figure that we may be able to find a 2005 model at cut-rate prices if we really want to, but we may end up waiting a year before throwing yet another car loan on the pile. We'll have to see. It may end up that I will be driving this car if the SuperSaturn cannot survive another year or two.

Oh, I was checking the weather and it looks like we'll get a bit of snow this weekend for our trip up to Rochester to visit Sean and Lucy. As it goes, the winter weather is rather unpredictable other than saying 'cold and windy' for this region. Snow is always a possibility. The amount is always in contention though. I find no comfort in the predictions for 60% chance of flurries. The idea of a 'flurry' to a Southern Pennsyltucky resident is not the same as that of a grizzled veteran of the Great Lake shores.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 12:58 PM