Quote of the day: Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come. — Matt Groening, “Life in Hell”

Went car shopping yesterday. For anyone who ever has ever dealt with a car salesman you can guess that it wasn’t the best of experiences, but our Pontiac SUV had been paid off for 9 months and we felt it was time for something new. There were 2 Honda cars that we specifically wanted to check out, and in retrospect we should have started with the Honda Dealership right off. But we’d been drooling over some of the new 2010 Camaros since they first appeared at a dealership we drive by regularly (and even before that, when one appeared in the movie Transformers), and just had to check it out… big mistake.

What we’d hoped would be a quick 30-minute stop to check out how it felt to sit in the Camaro and Mustang turned into a two and a half hour ordeal. The Camaro was an awesome machine, but a little too tight inside, and the price tag would have meant trading in the SUV… leaving the cramped Camaro as our only car. The Mustang was better on both the price and space, but we still opted against it. Thinking we were done, they then talked us in to checking out their SUV’s, which was our other option – trade in our Pontiac for something flashy and new. We liked the ones they showed us to some extent, but it was time consuming and they passed us from salesman to salesman to check out the different makes, before saddling us back with our original guy… who started to get pushy, somehow maneuvering us into his office to fill out paperwork when we hadn’t eaven really decided in a car.

In the end we used the excuse that we had to get out of there to eat (true, both of us had gotten hungry) and blew out of there, promising to come back. We didn’t, though I had to ignore 3 phone calls from the guy the rest of the day.

After running home to eat we finally made it to the Honda dealership, and it was like night and day. First off, we weren’t jumped by a salesman the moment we climbed out of the car. We browsed for a few minutes before someone came up and asked if there was anything they could help us with, almost like we were in a shop browsing for clothes. They weren’t pushy at all, and didn’t bat an eye when we wanted to test drive the cute CR-Z that was sitting on their showroom floor, the only one they had.

First we tried out the 2010 CR-V, Honda’s flagship SUV. Right away it was obvious that it was head and shoulders above the rest. It just felt nicer to sit in, the nav system was easier to use, and was a smoother ride with a nice, quiet engine. The price was better, and I even liked the color… a metallic gray. Then we tried Honda’s newest toy, a shiny silver CR-Z.

The CR-Z was the other car we’d come there to see. A car that Honda touts as the “first hybrid sports car”, it looks pretty close to that. It was a 2-seater, full electronic/nav package, big cargo space in the back. There are 3 driving modes. In normal (which you can tell you’re in because the console glows an electric blue) it handles like a regular car, though still takes advantage of the hybrid technology. In Econ (console glows green), everything is throttled back a little for real gas savings, probably good for city driving. The in Sports mode (console is a deep blue with a little red circle in the middle of the main guage) all throttles are off, giving the engine some real power. You can really feel these differences immediately when changing the driving mode.

We had a real dilemma. We fell in love with both cars, and for about 30 seconds we considered both… which would not have hurt us too bad financially, but still not the smartest move and we abandoned it pretty quickly. In the end rather than buy the cute sports car as a second car we did the smartest thing and traded in our SUV for the pretty new one. But we given up on the other one, maybe in a couple years…

My latest project, did this over the last couple days, cover art for my wife Lisa’s current book project, Angel of Mercy. This was done in pencil/pen and finished in Photoshop. This isn’t really the final version, rather than a shadow of an angel as shown she wants there to be the silhouette of an angel in the background, with some highlighting on the angel’s face… but for now I’m burned out on it and not quite sure what I want the angel to look like. So I did this version, and may come back to it if I get inspired.

Click on the thumbnail below to see a full version of the cover:

Except for the word “Pirates”, sounds pretty dull, doesn’t it? I thought so too, until last year my friend Mike came for a visit (he lives in California, me in Oregon) and introduced me to this annoying little game. Well, the game itself is kind of fun, you assemble little ships from pieces that are punched out of styrene cards, use a point system to assemble your fleet and then go out in seach of gold, fighting the one or more players that are out there for the limited amounts of treasure that are hiding an the islands in the field (ocean?) of battle. The rules are fairly simple but can lead to hours of fun.

So why do I say annoying? Because my real love of the game is not the gameplay itself, but the ships. There seem to be an endless number of different ships out there (each with their own firepower, speed, ship name, and country of origin). I’ve always had an interest in any kind of ships, and apparently I must have all the ones they make… every time I am at our local grocery store I am compelled to buy another box of them just to see what I might get. Unfortunately this means I have endless duplicates that I have collected in my search for new ones. The ones pictured above …Vikings… still continue to elude me. Being of Norse origin myself, this is something I may have to resort to eBay to rectify.

So somebody, please, introduce me to a new hobby! I haven’t even played the game for many months, yet still continue to buy new ships.

My wife Lisa and I (for fun) have been talking about our top 5 “Laminated Lists“. After some thought here is what I came up with, though I suppose it is subject to change as I remember new people. For the most part it’s not people most would think of, but I don’t care…

#1 Amelia Warner

#2 Kristin Bell	#3 Scarlett Johansson
#4 Emilie De Ravin	#5 Sophia Myles

Is it odd that the top one is brunette, and all the rest are very blonde? I hadn’t really thought about it until seeing this… So there it is, comments welcome!