Missives from the 6th Floor

It seems to have been worth the time, however. We found a guy at Arnold's Appliance in Bellevue who seems to know his stuff, and after test-driving a CR-V we ruled it out as a possibility.

The Honda sales guy also made the classic mistake of telling me that my budget was just a bit to small. Hint to any one reading this in sales - if I give you a budget, show me what it buys, then show me what a couple thousand more gets me. Don't just try to sell me the more expensive option and suggest I "find more money" (yea, he actually said that) or finance the rest just cause you'd prefer to sell me a new car vs. a used one.

That wasn't the deciding factor though. The test drive revealed the 07 as under-powered (though I suspect that being a VTEC it would do OK, if you flog it to death) and a bit top heavy. What clinched it for me was that prior to '07 the CR-V had a control layout that Dawnise didn't love and an external spare tire (what's up with that?), and while they fixed some of those issues in the '07, it fails to impress.

We also stopped at the Subaru dealership, where the sales guy we spoke to did pretty much the right thing - "here's what that budget will get you, and here's the price jump from that to a new one, just for your consideration." We test drove an Outback 2.5i, and it's a nice car, with a number of features we've gotten used to in our 330ci, but without the heart-stopping price tag.

Dawnise hated the color, and was concerned that it felt long (and looked like a mom-mobile), so I'm doing another round of looking for options, but the Outback is definitely a contender.

And after adding up how much appliances are likely to cost, I'm really wondering if we can postpone the car purchase. 'course is snowed a bit again on Sunday - which makes twice so far this season, and it "never" snows in Seattle... We could solve the snow problem with a set of snow tires and sandbags, but that wouldn't solve the "we can't transport large objects or additional people" problem, so it seems a car purchase is likely.

The HDMI cable I was waiting for arrived, so Sunday - around a very nice brunch with Adam and Helen - I took the mantle apart, drilled some holes in it, and routed video and speaker cables through the hollow mantle space. It ended up looking much better than just snaking the HDMI cable along the mantle, and didn't require dry-wall repair.

I tucked the speaker wires under the baseboard, mounted the speakers, and ran a temporary power cable to the TV. So we're back the "boob-tube" business. (Well, not really - we still have neither cable nor an antenna.) The viewing angle isn't perfect - it's a little higher than I'd really like, but I think it'll work.

Once all that was done, and we'd had some dinner, we sat down and watched The Runaway Bride Dr. Who Christmas episode.