Thursday, March 26, 2009

Car Haiku Thursday

Two weeks in new car.
Then back to the Highlander.
Can I have Fit back?

No more Toyotas.
Want to feel what I'm driving.
My next car? Honda.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Little Man Report

The Little Dude is coming up on 18 months(!). He's doing great. He even does slipper retrieval upon request.


("Go get daddy a beer" can't be too far away now...)

He's chatty. Little Man is working "No" pretty hard right now. He's also adding phrases and multiple syllable words to his vocabulary. "Turtle" and "Go, dog, go!" are new this week. He's a good parrot, too. He'll usually echo the last thing you said pretty well.

It's fun to do the alphabet song with him. If you stop and point to him to give you the next line, wherever you are in the alphabet, he shouts out "Veeeeee!".

He chases us around with his coat in the mornings when he's ready to go. And it has to be Dad that loads him up in the car, not Mom. But it's OK for either one of us to unload him.

He's even getting more comfortable around the dog.

(photos by J. Canole)

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

I've Got Gas

32.20 MPG for the second tank on the Fit (up from 28.84 on the first tank). Much better.

I drove it a little more gently the second week. I may have been a little harsh on the gas pedal at first.

I've also had 3 people ask me if the Fit is a hybrid.

Hilarious.
Cooking Fail: Plantains



Further proof that I am not Latino.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Fit But You Know It

As much as it hurts to leave the Acura behind, the Fit is helping to ease that pain.

It looks like a compact family car. It drives like a beast. It just wants to go fast.

0 - 30, it's faster than the Acura. (30 - 50 and beyond, not so much).

It seems to be changing my driving habits a bit. There's been an uptick in the "Yeah, I can make that light" kind of behavior. (The over / under for my first ticket is April 1st.)

The car is telling me I'm averaging 33.7 MPG so far. I find that a little hard to believe based on how hard I've been hitting the gas, but we'll see.

We got it with everything. It's pimped out. But there's still a few missing options that I would have liked (and gladly paid a bit extra for): moon roof, external temperature, satellite radio.

But those are minor complaints. There's a lot to like. It's the closest actual driving experience I've had to playing Mario Kart (yeah, it's that much fun...).

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The Fit is Go!

The Canole family has added a few vehicle to the fleet. Total mileage for our cars has dropped from 242,000 to 80,000.

The new Canolemobile is...

The Honda Fit.


We started looking at cars last summer (we like to take things slowly). I drove a Prius and HATED it (there was no feel to it... it was like driving a golf cart... you're completely isolated from the driving experience). Checked out the Accord and Camry. Not bad, but HUGE in their current incarnations. Didn't care much for the Civic. The Venza turned out to be too expensive. We didn't want another SUV. So where did that leave us?

A friend of mine with a similar family situation said he had been digging the Honda Fit.

Honda Fit? What's that?

I hadn't really even thought about it before then. I looked into it The reviews were all great. Both the Car & Driver crowd AND the Consumer Reports crowd loved it. The idea of a Fit kept growing on me Can a car that small be safe? Yup. Five star crash safety ratings all around. Maybe a small car would be good for our daily commute. Maybe we don't need that much car.

I test drove one in November. Whoa. Tons of fun (it's a Honda...). The Fit is the exact opposite of the Prius.

And for a car this small, it's enormous. It's got tons of space.


So why buy a car now? First, we got a pretty good deal (my suggestion - do your homework online, get your quotes, then show up on the last day of the month). And second, if the current economic trend continues, and the apocalypse does come, we'll all driving around looking for gas Road Warrior style soon enough. So it'll be nice to have a car that gets 33 miles per gallon on the highway.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Pouring Out a Forty of Transmission Fluid...

I have a bit of sad news to report... I have traded in the Acura.

After 9 years and 162,377 miles together, we've gone our separate ways.

More information to come...

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Whoa...


Trader Joe's: What did I just spend $75 on?

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Always Ensure the Proper TP to Bunghole Ratio...



I caught about 45 minutes of "Beavis and Butthead" on MTV2 last night. They showed the one where Beavis breaks into The Great Cornholio after a few "crappuccinos" at the beatnik coffee shop. I was in my glory.

I sent this pic around to a bunch of my friends. Dorky? You bet. But you had to be there. Nothing was bigger from 1993 - 1996 than Beavis.

Monday, March 09, 2009

That's My Boy...




Teaching Little Man the joy of handfarts.

Friday, March 06, 2009

The Best of 2008
By P. Canole

1. Vivian Girls - "Tell the World"
2. R.E.M. - "Horse To Water"
3. MGMT - "Electric Feel"
4. TV On the Radio - "Golden Age"
5. Beck - "Gamma Ray"
6. Sigur Rós - "Gobbledigook"
7. Santogold - "L.E.S. Artistes"
8. Mudcrutch - "Scare Easy"
9. Fleet Foxes - "White Winter Hymnal"
10. Bell X1 - "Rocky Took a Lover"
11. TV On the Radio - "DLZ"
12. The Raconteurs - "Rich Kid Blues"
13. Sigur Rós - "Inní mér syngur vitleysingur"
14. Holy F*** - "Lovely Allen"
15. MGMT - "Time to Pretend"
16. R.E.M. - "Supernatural Superserious"
17. The Raconteurs - "Salute Your Solution"