Annalog

NOTE:  if you don’t care about cars go to the end of the post.

We did our part today for stimulating the economy.  We finally purchased another car.  It only took us 7 months to come to an agreement.  Needless to say finding a car that satisfied enough of all of the rational and irrational constraints we each have took a bit. I had to give on gas mileage and some on price.  Paul had to give up on gadgets (there is no navigation system) and a little bit on the manliness front (not to spoil things, but our new-to-us vehicle is a wagon).  I should also note that Paul’s going to edit this. He’s sensitive.  

Here’s the embarrassing part.  We bought another Audi.  Paul was still interested in the Acura RL (his first love from this round of car shopping), but the 2005 Audi Allroad wagon we purchased today is more practical. So even though the Acura RLs have come down about 5K since we first looked at them last spring (still not what I would call reasonable), the lack of fold flat seats along with a few other details meant we ended up with an Audi wagon instead.  

Things we didn’t sacrifice on—it’s possible to put a kid in a car seat without contortionist acts to avoid endangering either her or our heads.  The car will seat 5 almost as comfortably as the Acura.  This includes the fact that Paul can sit comfortably in the back seat.  While I haven’t actually tried, I am reasonably certain it is possible to put the jogging stroller in the back, perhaps even with other stuff.  It’s a boat. While Paul will miss the manual transmission of our current Audi, I won’t miss it in stop and go traffic as soon as I stop clutching the brake.  I am still very nervous about repair issues.  Serious amounts of web research says this year and model is much better than our current car so we’ll just have to hope.  

Anna said five while doing a high five today.  I have no idea where she learned this, but its very cute.  Here’s a couple of pictures from the recent archives for those who don’t care about cars.