After Lizzie’s second stint in a couple months on the shoulder of I-294 in an overheating 94 Accord wagon, we decided enough was enough. We were sinking an average of $350-400 into the car if you average the last eight months or so out, and we finally realized that that’s a car payment. So we went to trade it in today and buy a Honda Fit. Against all odds, Lizzie (who will do most of the driving in this car) preferred the standard to the automatic — she has a lot of city traffic, but it’s SO much zippier than the automatic was. I danced a little jig — I really love driving stick. We had a great salesman named David at Elmhurst Honda — NO sales pitch whatsoever. Let us drive it, let us ask the questions, answered them fully and offered a little more information, and basically just sat back and let us run the show. Got us a good deal that matched what we could do when we said we couldn’t swing the original numbers, and it was all done it about two hours. We still had time for lunch at the Wendy’s you see behind it. If you’re looking for a Honda, you couldn’t do better than David.

It’s Cubbie blue. I was sitting there waiting for David to finish some incantation or other in The Back Room and starting to freak out, and Lizzie chose that moment to point out the particular shade of blue that it is. I immediately started to feel better. She must know me or something. Anyhow, the panic of the stacks of money we just committed to aside, it’s a neat car. Good mileage, huge inside, small outside, the seats all reconfigure a bunch of ways so you can fit all kinds of things in the car, and it drives very tightly. It does other things, too — it checks our tire pressure, checks the position and weight of all the occupants against the speed of the car and adjusts the six airbags so only the right ones go off at the right pressure (so a mild fender bender doesn’t result in you picking your glasses out of your forehead), and so on. All kinds of fun toys. And it’s cute as a button.

The best part, though? A 7-year, 100,000-mile warranty. I LOVE THAT. When you buy only $500 cars, they tend to cost more than $500 very quickly. 100,000 miles is a lot of miles before we have to start covering everything.

Lizzie has had a couple of new cars, but this is my first one. I’m as panicky as I am happy, but this really is pretty kicky. Of course, there was a big wind/rain/hailstorm on our way home, so we spent the whole drive dodging and weaving and worrying about banging up the new car right off the lot. But here’s a fun stat — we increased the mileage on it by 200% on the way home. It had 12 miles on it when we drove it away, and it now has 36 miles. Tee hee!

John McCain has now taken a dumb cheap shot at Jimmy Carter, calling him a lousy president. He must have an angle. Maybe he’s trying to make peace with Iran after his musical interlude of “bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb-Iran”? Maybe this is a clumsy end-around to get something going about a Democrat in office during a gas shortage? Maybe he doesn’t like peanuts? Southerners? Habitat for Humanity?

No, wait, I know what it is. He’s a tactless bastard with no respect for anyone but himself. I would call him a curmudgeon, but that word (to me) implies some tongue-in-cheek humor (however dark). It also implies deeper understanding of what the curmudgeon is griping about and an urge to display a superior intellect and vocabulary in his public and sarcastic disdain for it. I don’t think that’s the case here — his statements tend to sound more like a playground bully who thinks he’s funny than like a classic curmudgeon.

All politics aside (and I really mean that — this has nothing to do with his position on anything in particular), I can’t imagine letting this guy loose on the world for four (or, God help us, eight) years. Bush is what he is — and thankfully, he won’t be it at us much longer. But McCain is simply a deeply mean person. He’d be mean to Congress. He’d be mean to the UN. He’d be mean at a barbecue. He’d be mean at the Easter Egg roll. He’s just a jerk, and can only hide that for so long before he blows it. And at risk of sounding too hippie-dippy, I must admit that I think there’s a level of meanness beyond which you are not ideal for the presidency. Straight talk is one thing — nasty, name-calling statements about a former president (former by 28 years) is just crummy and childish. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised — this is a consistent, every-six-week-or-so occurrence from the Straight Talk Express.

No, Carter wasn’t a good particularly president. Did America improve under his watch? Hard to say it did, all things considered. He was and is a good man, but realistically, he wasn’t the right fit for the country at the time. But did we enter a preemptive war based on intentionally specious reasoning during his watch? Did he systematically dismantle the Constitutional right to privacy? No. He micromanaged the White House into ineffectiveness, allowed gas prices to get away from him, made what I still think was a valiant but failed poorly planned attempt to rescue the hostages, and had a brother who he couldn’t control. For that last bit, Clinton had one too. Bobby Kennedy would have had one if he had lived to be elected. And if the Bushes had run Jeb instead of W as they originally wanted to, Jeb would have one, too.

But I digress. It really comes down to this: if you want the job, show some respect for those who have held it before you. In addition to displaying basic honor and integrity, it shows the American people that you will respect the job while YOU hold it. The worst thing that I’ve heard Obama say about Bush or McCain (and I’ll admit I haven’t heard everything, so he may well have lowroaded on something and I wouldn’t know) is that McCain would be four more years of Bush. In my opinion, that statement far too accurately defines them both.

After Doug’s post a couple months ago about a hailstorm in Seattle, I was left trying to remember the last major hailstorm we had here. The last one I can remember was when I still had my Subaru Justy (around 1997-2000) — I got caught on McCormick Boulevard (long red lights) in a storm that produced half-inch hail upon my poor little roller skate of a car, and it was bloody loud.

Tonight, we had a similar storm. Nora and I went outside to check it out (from under the covered part of the deck), and watched it basically blast out our hanging plants and garden. Hopefully they’ll recover, but it was one whale of a storm. Some of the hailstones were almost 3/4″ wide, and most were about 1/2″. Crazy. I haven’t checked my car yet, but I suspect my resale value has gone down a bit more (a ‘94 Mercury Tracer wagon with front end damage draws a pretty penny if there’s no hail damage, you know).

Everyone knows about Tiger Woods and his bum knee. But if I were another golfer on the tour, I’d be pretty cranky about the funeral dirge that the sports media is playing now. The season is apparently over if Tiger won’t be there. Today on SportsCenter, Rick Reilly called the tour “all Pips and no Gladys.” Funny, but I think Rocco put together a pretty entertaining round himself last week, too!

Our stellar VP has done it again — he’s proven himself to be one of the most compassionate people in D.C.

I like how he apologized for it later, but RIGHT after he said it acknowledged that he can say that kind of thing because he’s not running for office anymore. Because, you know, that’s really the only reason to refrain from saying butthead things like this.