Well, I have a new car parked in my driveway. Its mine! And, I’m about to set out for a 687 mile road trip, so no time to post pictures or anything. I’ll try to get to that tomorrow night, from the hotel.

Its a 2008, Honda Element LX AWD, tangerine metallic. Its stuffed full of work stuff too.

Laters!

Asian Chicks.

Though – Sandra Oh IS cute.

Have you ever noticed how when setting up a budget, its kinda hard to actually spend all of your paychecks? Yet, in real life its VERY hard to actually spend below your paycheck?

Big, busy day tomorrow. I get my new car (a 2008 Honda Element LX AWD, in Tangerine Metallic), and I head to Michigan for a week long business trip. I’ll post pictures of both, of course. I’m quite excited about the new car. I’ll be driving it instead of a company car, simply because its new, and I want to. So thats 1400 miles or so in a week. Thats a darn good break in period, in a mixture of snow and rain.

It should be a ton of fun!

Some Nurses are being criminally charged for quitting their jobs.

They arrested the Energizer Bunny. He was charged with battery.

Since I’m giving very serious thought to getting a Honda Element (I might have one by the end of the week), I’m also thinking of places to go.

One place I would like to check out, is Edisto Beach State Park. Take a couple of days, go up with a dog, maybe a parrot…

I’ve wanted to check out the coast for years.

There is an interesting post over at Balkinization about how equal representation for states, instead of proportional representation based on population, helps to polarize racial politics. Basically, Mark Graber maintains that a states representation in the Government should be based on how many people live in that state, instead of being divided equally per state.

Does anyone else see the fundamental flaw in this argument? Its based on the assumption that the United States of America is one individual country. This is only nominally true – the United States is a collection of semi-autonomous states. The Federal government already makes a nasty habit of overstepping its constitutional bounds, through clever misapplications of constitutional text (most of it started by the court packing of the New Deal). Changing to proportional representation would only strengthen the federal government, instead of weakening it, which is what we need.

My largest hermit crab, which I haven’t seen in quite some time, it sitting in the food dish, munching on a half decayed banana piece. My dogs are rough housing upstairs – it sounds like a dull tornado.

I did a bit of math. A new car is probably a year or so away. While a new Element is only around 20,000 dollars, thats a bit more than I can afford right now. So, sinking about 3 grand into my car makes far more sense. Besides, I do want to see what the 2009 year model is like, since it should be a fairly substantial revision. And, I still have to test drive both the Element, and the Toyota Scion XB.

Though I do have to say thanks to Ubuntu UUU3 for pointing me towards dogcars.com.

I’ve got a ton of books to dispose of. So, I’m looking for two outlets to donate to. I would like to send some paperbacks overseas to troops in Afghanistan. And, I would like to donate to prisoners in the U.S. I’ve found a prison book donation site that serves the South, so after a bit more research, I’ll probably go with it. I haven’t looked for the troops one yet.

I’m not fond of the American judicial system – we have way, way too many people locked up for truly dumb shit, like drugs, prostitution, etc. Stuff that ain’t the governments business.

I’m not fond of wars against innocent countries either – like Iraq. Afghanistan was justified, so my preference would be sending stuff there. Not that the troops have a choice, so I’ll donate to anywhere for them.

Paizo – ex publishers of Dungeon, and Dragon Magazine, have a new line of books called Planet Stories. These books bring back into print some long ago pulp fiction (and some stuff by Gary Gygax – most of which I’ve read, and which isn’t that good). However, the old pulp fiction, from the 30′s through 50′s, bodes to be well. Most of it I haven’t read. I’ve got two of the books on order on order from Amazon, so I’ll talk about them more in depth then.

Kermit and Harley are presently having a screaming contest. Harley is my blue and gold macaw, Kermit is my blue crowned conure. Harley wins of course, being a zillion times bigger. (Well, 5 times bigger).

But its kinda painfully impressive being in the same room that the contest is taking place in.