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01/18/2004 Entry: "it's been a good run"

Spending money scares me. I can control it a little when the purchase is photo related but even laying out 70 bucks for a box of 11x14 warmtone paper has me standing in the aisle at the local camera store for a good ten minutes while I debate with myself over the purchase.

That should give you some idea of the state of my mind when I finally came to the conclusion that retirement age has been reached for my 1984 VW Jetta. I'd had hopes of turning over 200k on the odometer but may have to settle for the 193,000 that are there now. The poor thing has been giving signs of the end for a few months now, some of them making every trip an adventure. It's been a good run since I first bought it 17 years ago, getting to know every idiosyncratic foible and failure, trusting the car to keep me safe and find its way home.

But I think the time has come to say goodbye.

Saturday afternoon found me wandering the unfamiliar environment of a car dealership, considering the purchase of a Honda Element. I'll be the first to admit the vehicle's a sort of ugly, boxy, funky thing, caught somewhere in the indecisive territory of van/wagon/truck/SUV. I'm still not sure what it is but I kinda like it. I've been obsessing over the finances of the purchase, spending too much time in Excel playing "what if" but I think I'm close to doing it with much less agonizing than normal.

Why less agony? It's a big empty box of a car. To my warped mind that makes it a perfect candidate for turning into a pinhole camera. Tape some plastic over the windows, tack up a sheet of Arista lith film in the back and put some matboard with a pinhole mounting up by the windshield, and it's now a pinElement! Yeah, I'm a sick puppy... sick enough to have already run some preliminary exposure calcs, but it makes burying myself under car payments less painful.

Posted by dan @ 01/22/2004 02:24 PM ET

Have you looked at the PT Cruiser? We love ours! Haul 2 cool chests in the back while doing Meals On Wheels.

Posted by Bonnie @ 01/18/2004 08:35 PM ET