Oscar

Our old espresso machine, acquired on grocery store affinity points, served us well. For the past few months it's often refused to operate unless nudged or tilted on its side during the warm-up phase. Then it gave up working entirely. Definitive diagnostic disassembly and attempted repair last week proved unfruitful: one of the connections had corroded through, and something else in the thermostat assembly was no longer functioning, likely as a result of all the short-circuiting that had been happening. It hadn't cost us a cent, and had faithfully made between 4 and 10 hot drinks a day for almost four years. We moved it out of the kitchen.

For a few days we tried to make do with the old drip coffee maker. It just wasn't the same. So, kijiji to the rescue: I found a professionally-refurbished Nuova Simonelli Oscar available nearby for just over a third of the original price. It still cost a lot, but it's so nice. It's a beast of a machine. It has far more pressure and steam than its predecessor, and is built for the kind of heavy use our family wants. And it has a heat exchanger, so it stays hot as you pull shot after shot and run the steamer full-tilt. It is heavy, though, and demands quite a footprint on the kitchen counter. But, wow, it does such a good job.

Ghost town docent

This is a plum area for a teen to find summer employment. With such a small population, and a large summer influx of vacationers, there are plenty of jobs for students. For many teens all it takes is a bit of word-of-mouth expression of interest, and some employer will call them up and offer work.

Noah tends to be a bit of a content homebody, introverted and with few material ambitions, so it took until this summer for him to really want a job. He eventually decided (with a bit of nudging, I confess) that he was interested in The Sandon Job. Sandon is a ghost town near here; it experienced a huge silver mining boom in the 1890s, and is what really opened our whole area up to European exploration and settlement. The town was mostly destroyed by fires and then by a massive flood in the 1950s but a couple of tumbledown buildings have seem some restoration and a few survived the various disasters and been kept up by private interests. There's a Historical Society that runs a small museum and keeps archives and artifacts. The museum is open during the summer, and typically receives a grant to assist with hiring a student. The job is about 30 hours a week and pays fairly generously. The student is expected to help the adult employees with whatever work is necessary, from cleaning the outhouse (not the pit! just the outhouse!) to greeting visitors and various other types of clerical and cleaning work.

Unlike most of the word-of-mouth service industry hiring around here, this position, being filled by a non-profit society and funded by a grant, has considerably more administrative procedure behind it. They advertised for applicants. Noah submitted a cover letter and a CV. He followed up personally to make it clear that his interest was genuine. He corresponded with the Society president, and then spoke on the phone with the person in charge of hiring. There was then a proper interview (albeit held in the casual circumstances of a local café), and a waiting period while other candidates were interviewed. Finally he got the phone call offering him the job, and there was another meeting to discuss the details. All of which was really terrific for Noah, I think. He has the people skills necessary to present himself well, but he's always uncomfortable with new situations and unfamiliar expectations. Now he's done the whole job-search thing once, and successfully. That will give him confidence with the process if and when he has to cope with a more typical job market in another location.

So he puts in four or five full days at the museum every week. He works with one or another of the two main adult employees. They are as different as night and day in some respects, and they don't like each other much. They never work together; Noah is the primary interface between them -- a potentially awkward position to be in. His diplomacy and adaptability has amazed me. I've seen it in his peer relationships, but to see him confidently navigating the social demands of these adult-co-worker relationships is really awesome. I won't share details for reasons of privacy, but there are some considerable interpersonal challenges involved in all this. But ... well, some of Noah's comments about those challenges have made it clear to me what a charitable, empathic and honourable person he is. It's enough to make me a bit weepy-proud just thinking about it.

I know that Noah has a tendency to be quiet and self-conscious. I wondered how awkward and avoidant he would be with museum visitors. I wasn't sure how he was coping. When he was exploring the possibility of applying for the job I admit I underplayed the public relations aspect of it, knowing it would make him anxious and possibly turn him off applying altogether. He does not really want me visiting the museum while he's working, and I've respected that, but it's left me curious about his work persona. Was he very reserved? Was he busying himself with cleaning and administrative work to avoid having to talk to strangers? I knew his adult coworkers were enjoying working with him and had nothing but good to say, but still, I wondered.

Then I met some visitors to the area at Sophie's Dance Camp. They had been out to Sandon the day before, they said, and had met my son. "What an amazing tour guide he is!" they gushed. "Really?" I said. "That's great to hear, because you know, well, he can be a bit shy." "Shy?!" they said, incredulously. "Not at the museum! No way. Not at all! He's so knowledgeable and personable." I'd love to be a fly on the wall. And yeah, when I ask Noah about it, it's clear he's amiably greeting visitors and doing a ton of the actual guiding and talking -- and is pleased that he's doing well at this. It's been the perfect summer experience for him.

Plus he's making lots of money, which he tends to forget about; he periodically remembers the paycheque thing with surprise and delight. He's thinking of buying an iPhone (outright: no cell plan, at least for now), and a gaming console, and funding a trip to Edmonton to visit friends and attend a music festival.

The Delica

Remember way back in 2008 when I was driving Erin and Noah to Calgary once a month for lessons, and was pining for a Mitsubishi Delica? It would hold our family and instruments and groceries, and would transport the Corazon choir kids, and would get up and down our driveway, and be reliable on our mountain roads during the winter. At the time, Chuck talked me down. We needed a reliable vehicle that could be serviced locally, not an ancient Japanese monster that no one had a clue what to do with.

So what changed? Well, we eked four and a half more years out of the Sienna and although I'm still driving seven kids to Nelson once a week, we're within spitting distance of no longer needing all that passenger space. Two of those teens are graduating and moving away, which brings us down to 5 passengers and a driver, and in a year and a half Noah will likely move on too. So we still need a minivan, but only for another year or two.

The other thing that changed is that there's now a service station in Nelson that is specializing in working on these things.

I wrestled with the fuel economy issue. I feel no end of guilt over the fuel we burn for transportation. While living rurally allows us to cut our carbon footprint in several important areas, transportation is definitively not one of them. Part of me really wanted to hold out for a hybrid Toyota Highlander. But we had to buy Erin a violin this year, and a Highlander would have meant making a big long-term (financed) investment. Would we be kicking ourselves in a couple of years, making payments an expensive near-new Highlander when our passenger needs had diminished to Prius proportions?

And really ... by owning a minivan we are saving the need for a second vehicle to drive all those kids to Nelson every week. Our minivan is certainly not burning as much fuel as would be required to get two smaller Kootenay-winter-worthy vehicles to Nelson and back.

Besides, the Delica gets remarkably good mileage for a 4WD vehicle. It's almost as good as the Sienna 2WD which is right near the top for 7+ passenger vehicle fuel economy. No, it's not a Prius, not a Leaf. But those aren't realistic for us right now.

We've owned the Delica for a little more than a month now. No nasty surprises so far from a mechanical standpoint. Driving it has taken a bit of getting used to. Mostly for the high, truck-like feel. The right-hand drive was surprisingly no big deal. The kids absolutely love it: the modular seating and sun roof makes for a sociable living-room feel in the passenger seats and the rides back and forth to Nelson are quite lovely.

Graduated!

Fiona graduated from contact lens training lessons today.

Okay, she only had the one lesson so this isn't a case of hard-won mastery or anything, but she did brilliantly well and doesn't need any more training sessions, just a check on her eyes in the New Year to make sure they're coping well with the contacts. It took her a couple of tries to get the first one in but after that she popped them in and out no problem and was clearly very comfortable with the whole process. The staff were apparently very impressed, calling her a rock star, swearing she'd set some sort of record.

She loves her glasses, but they're inconvenient for things like running, soccer, trampolining, skiing. She thought she'd like the option of contacts once in a while.

I had been thinking the same thing for myself and recently began using contacts for running whenever it's snowing. What a difference not to have glasses laden with melted snowflakes, fogging up every 50 metres! I certainly understood Fiona's desire to have this option.

Thankfully our optometrist didn't dismiss her interest categorically based on her age. His philosophy was that it's more about maturity than age, and Fiona's maturity seems to fit the bill.

Size doesn't matter

Sometimes it makes me snicker, the incongruity of size vs. competence. Fiona is small for her age, but with her bright optimism and her older siblings as models, she has a strong independent streak. She insists on being very grown up. On Fridays I laugh about giving a ride home to the proprietor of the local tea business ... who is still in a booster seat. And on a Sunday morning our baker of delicious chocolate walnut brownies needs to sit upon the kitchen counter to reach the mixer.

The brownies were wonderful, by the way.

New tea, new candy

When you have a lot of rhubarb in the garden, and strawberries are coming into season, and red clover is overflowing the waysides, and you're an 8-year-old looking for inspiration for a new tea blend, the colours of your inspiration are pink and green.

I truly love this tea. We found some bulk organic white peony tea, fair trade and imported in small quantities by a Chinese woman in the area. Fiona and I chopped strawberries and rhubarb, dried them on the dehydrator, picked a couple of litres of red clover heads and lightly dried them. Mixed this all together and voilà, a beautiful blend full of the colours and flavours of spring. We used roughly equal volumes of each component, so that makes it easy to reproduce if you'd like to make your own. I expect any fresh green or white loose leaf tea would work just as well as the white peony. Fiona has packaged up a dozen bags of it to sell at the market tomorrow. It will be her "Featured Tea of the Week," and samples will be available if you're interesting in dropping by her stall.

Brewed up it's yellow with a touch of ruddiness. It is absolutely wonderful with a little dollop of honey mixed in. I expect it will be great iced as well. This is definitely a tea that I'm going to mix up a couple hundred grams of and mark "Not for sale" and tuck in my cupboard for my personal use in the middle of winter. Fiona calls it Pink Paradise. In February it will reassure me that spring will come again.

Sophie received a couple of books on candy-making in the mail yesterday. She's all inspired to make marzipan bumblebees, violet velvets, blackberry paste and crystallized rose petals. This book is amazing: great pictures and the recipes use real ingredients. The raspberry lollipop recipe starts with sugar and raspberries; the caramel apple recipe makes absolutely no mention of Kraft products in any way, shape or form. I'm looking forward to her explorations!

Survey says...

Google Stats tells me some odd things about what people are looking for when they land on my blog.

Most popular keyword searches:

nurtured by love
hairy oven
beakman motor
nutured by love (note the surprisingly common and rather, uh, interesting mis-spelling)
pseudomaturity
dorodango
companion cube tissue cozy
corazon choir nelson
huaraches stealth rubber
audience manners children

Most popular posts / pages:

Cuisenaire Discovery Book from 2008
Us 2011
Unschooling in a nutshell 2011
PUPD (Periodic Unschoolers' Panic Disorder) 2008
Dorodango tips 2009
Maturity and pseudo-maturity 2006
Why it's worth it (Suzuki music) 2008
Seed crackers 2007
Barefoot Runniversary 2010

Touch-typing game

Erin and I used to play this touch-typing game in chat windows.

One person touch-types a message but with their hands shifted outwards one key on the keyboard. Instead of having your index fingers over F and J, they'll be over D and K. Touch-typing will produce a certain amount of total nonsense on the screen. For instance if you type "hello there" with your hands shifted outwards, you get "jw;;p rjwew."

Then the other person, in order to decode what has been written, touch-types what they see in their message window, but with their hand shifted in the opposite direction, inwards. Try it. If you touch-type jw;;p rjwew with your hands shifted to centre one key so that the index fingers are over G and H and it will show up as ... hello there. Magic!

After you've translated what the other person has said, you then type your own response using the hands-out position. Erin is amazingly skilled at this. Me, while I'm an awesome touch-typist I find myself having to close my eyes and will myself into a zen-like state of focus, or else I start trying to type what I think the actual word is rather than the letters on the screen. Erin seems to be able to completely turn off that part of her brain and simply use her touch-typing physical memory.

Tonight we use a variation on this trick with our various names, shifting the left hand, right hand or both by one key in or out, touch-typing it and choosing from among the several possibilities our favourite new names.

Noah is now Nosh.
Fiona is Guibs.
Sophie is Siogue.
Erin is Erub.

and I am Nurabda.

Chuck, who went to bed early being on call, has not yet chosen his new name, but he largely ends up with an unfortunate collection of words with unpronouncable consonants.

Nostalgia

While helping purge mess and clutter from the attic and coming across a sheet of once-used tropical fish gift wrap that she recalls from a birthday gone by, Fiona quips:

"I'm feeling pretty nostalgic for being only 7 years old."

Putting Christmas "away"

Yesterday we took down the tree and the decorations. Sort of. Inspired by Erin's approach to décor in her cabin we hoisted the strands of Christmas lights to the ceiling of the living room. We don't have enough light in this room anyway. And it's easier than putting the lights away. Who knows how long they'll stay there. We quite like them.

Slightly demented Christmas decorations

Christmas is a time of traditions, of course, and teenagers and pre-teens hold onto those traditions at least as tightly as the rest of us. I suppose it's partly nostalgia on their part, but also the alluring excuse to be completely childish. Still, some things change.

Case in point #1: the Playmobil advent calendar, used over and over for many years. This year, though, the girl-child is found hanging upside down from the garland. The boy-child has enacted a spell (or perhaps some violence) upon the kittens, overturning the cat basket on them in the process. The cat is roasting in the fire. The mom-person is partying at the top of the Christmas tree, holding a bottle of wine and taking a swig from a beer stein. For the record the wine and beer did not come from the advent calendar; they were misappropriated from the medieval castle set.

Case in point #2: The fetching gingerbread house, nicely decorated with all sorts of features and decorations, including a snowman of toffee bonbons, a tree covered in M&Ms and cola balls, translucent window glass, and a bonfire around back. But off to the left a doghouse for the family pet, a starfish named "Mu" with a penchant for exercise balls. Mu is lying in a pool of blood but seems quite content. What has happened here? "It's a mystery!" I'm told. A crime scene, perhaps? 

Washer TV

It's taken several long years to rationalize this purchase. I wanted an energy-efficient front-loader, but I just couldn't make my peace with the extravagance. We have an exceptionally low pressure low flow water supply. We can barely have a shower -- the flow through even the "pulse" setting on the showerhead is scarcely more than a dribble at the best of times. And this meant that when the old top-load washer was running, just about all other water-related activities in the house had to stop. And since it took up to half an hour to fill the tub in the top-loader for each wash or rinse, that was a lot of time not to wash dishes, hair or bodies, especially with more pre-teen and teen showering going on here.

In addition since we hang-dry almost all our laundry, the idea of having wet clothes go onto the drying rack much less wet than usual was very appealing. That would mean they would be dry in less than a day, maybe even in as little as 12 hours if the wood stove was beneath them.

And so when this unit came on sale recently we decided to finally taken the plunge. We squeaked it into the tiny laundry room this afternoon, set it to run a first load, and then hunkered down in front of the viewing window to watch the show. It was fabulous! Unfortunately I missed the final spin, because I had a meeting, so I'm running another load (of dog bedding, no less) in order to catch the finale.

Favours

Recently the kids in this family have enjoyed having a little bit of cash on hand. Normally most of their net worth is recorded in ledgers, with which they track spending and savings trends, and from which it is easy for them to avail themselves of their parents' plastic and electronic purchasing options.

But "petty cash" accounts have found increasing utility in our family. Especially between Sophie, Fiona, Erin and myself. We've been trading favours, and attaching dollar values to them. Part of the reason I never wanted to pay the kids for chores is that I wanted them to understand that contributing to household work is a basic family responsibility, not a job for which they should expect compensation. But this petty economy is definitely in the spirit of fun and I don't think it's undermining that value.

Pictured: Fiona giving Sophie a back massage. One favour = 5-10 minutes of massage. One favour's value is approximately a dollar. Making a smoothie for a sibling (10-15 minutes of work including clean-up) is worth two favours. Making a London Fog: about one favour. This afternoon I covered Fiona for a sixty cent shortfall when she bought herself an organic Orange Cream Soda on the way home from the cross-country meet. In return I received the better part of a favour: about 5 minutes of back and leg massage.

They must be learning something from this. They're certainly enjoying it. And I confess that sixty cents is a pretty good deal for the robust massages Fiona gives.

How do I love thee?

Let me count the ways, o iPad of mine. 


Kids' violin lesson notes. Homeschooling report notes on the fly. Photo slide shows at information booths. Plants vs. Zombies played round-robin by the kids for six hours of amusement in the minivan. Episodes of awesome video series available instead of crappy TV in motels. StarWalk, an amazing star chart, held up to the sky to identify stars and find constellations. The super smart metronome that I use when the the kids are practicing. Notes taken at meetings. The amazing animation creativity it has encouraged. A lovely e-book reader for anytime anywhere access to scores of books -- and it works beautifully in bed when one's sidekick is asleep, without the need for a reading light. And of course the mobile internet access. The only negative ... I still dislike typing on it. I'm getting faster, but it's four-finger typing without a wrist rest, and fussy. I use my iMac keyboard when I'm doing extensive note-taking.


I do not own a smartphone, or a laptop, or a netbook, or a portable DVD player, or an e-book reader, or a portable gaming device. Considering the amount of time I spend travelling with kids (to Calgary, to Kelowna, to Nelson), and the various organizations I'm part of that need internet contact with me on the road, the iPad seemed like it might be a multi-tasker I'd get a lot of benefit from. So far that's definitely been the case. 


I like the size, although I haven't yet got myself a bag/purse/satchel that fits it, my only such accoutrement being teardrop-shaped and not quite wide enough at the top. The iPad is just big enough to be luscious as a video player and web browser, much more ergonomic as a touch-screen keyboard, and yet small and light enough to not be a burden to carry about. 


I bought the 32GB model. I haven't been particularly conservative in loading it up with anything other than music and podcasts: those I've kept to a minimum, because I do, after all, have an iPod. So far it's barely half full and there are a fair number of apps I downloaded just to check out that I could delete to free up space.


Good apps: 

• Star Walk. $4.99 An amazing interactive, time-and-location-customizable star chart with all sorts of linked information.
• Plants vs. Zombies $9.99. The kids love this and have played it on-line for ages. It's quirky, weird and endlessly challenging. It's even better on the iPad with the touch-screen, they tell me.
• Trundle HD. $Free. A game played out in a sort of virtual physics playground that makes good use of the accelerometer function of the iPad. (Quick overview of accelerometers here.) 
• Harbour Master HD. $Free. Seriously addictive simply multitasking game. Direct boats around a harbour to unload without crashing. Easily played co-operatively by two players.
• Pages $9.99. A workhorse word processor for the iPad, with a file system that can be synchronized with your computer. I take meeting notes and lesson notes on the iPad and can then upload, print, modify, append and re-synchronize them. 
• iBooks $Free. The application that lets you download and read books from the iBook store. So far the iBooks Canada store has limited selection; if you go there wanting something specific, odds are you won't find it, though there are lots of good reads available. The reader is no-nonsense, and has very adjustable tint, brightness and font size attributes.
• Animation Creator HD. $1.99. Truly creative and fun. Draw animations frame by frame, with layers and "ghosting" of the previous frame. Just needs the ability to rearrange frames to be perfect. A lovely creative diversion. Sophie has done some wonderful work with this.
• AD Jewels HD $Free. A Bejeweled knock-off. Works well. Unsurprisingly addictive.
• Subdivide Metronome $Free. A very full-featured metronome, entirely customizable by metre, subdivisions and tempo. Also allows you to measure the tempo of a particular song or piece by tapping along. A great practicing tool.
• Osmos $4.99. Zen-like newtonian bubble play game. 
• Notes, Mac Mail, Safari (and bookmarks) and Calendar. These are just standard pre-loads on the iPad. They synchronize with appropriate applications on my Mac. I love being able to update whatever I need without needing to sit at my desktop computer, and trust that it will all be copied and updated between computer and iPad, whenever I change anything. 

Whether an iPad will fill an empty niche in another person's life, I can't say. Given my dearth of mobile devices and my extent of travel, it has certainly filled a niche in mine.

Convenience store quip

Have I mentioned lately how supremely flexible and wonderful the high school is about accommodating Erin's music, travel and work-related learning? Well, yeah, they have been great. She can take Tuesday afternoons off for choir, and alternate Fridays and Mondays off for violin, and the latter three quarters of Wednesday off to work at her part-time job. Two months in Asia? A week or two for a choir tour? A random trip to Montreal? No problem. The school sees the value of this for her and just makes it work.

So today being Wednesday, she was working at the café during school hours. And she had to go from there on an errand to the convenience store for whipping cream. She knows the convenience store cashier from dozens of similar runs she's done at work over the past year or so. So they chat while Erin's checking out and the cashier asks "Are you homeschooling again this year, or going to school?" And Erin says "Going to school, but they don't make me actually be there all the time. They basically let me come and go as I please."

Some guy, a customer, is lingering around the cash too. He quips "That's not going to prepare you very well for a job."

"Uh, well," says Erin "I'm at my job right now, actually." And pays for the whipping cream and heads back to the café.

Touché.

Facebook

I surrendered to the world of Facebook about a year and a half ago. Mostly to keep track of what my elder kids were up to. I like it okay; some parts are great, some not so great. I do enjoy the little peeks into my kids' thoughts and their writings.

The whole family is on Facebook now. Sophie is planning to take a high school course soon, so she qualifies on a technicality. Fiona is really younger than Facebook members are supposed to be. But she loves being a part of whatever the rest of the family is, and I know that the "rules" on Facebook are about preventing lawsuits from parents rather than any real need to protect children from content. I like that by friending my kids I know that they are learning and abiding by rules concerning netiquette and internet safety. We are old hands at the internet, and I have no worries, but it's reassuring to see them behaving respectfully and expecting the same of their friends.

Fiona first joined a year or so ago. Eventually her account was terminated, presumably because she seemed younger than allowed. The other day I gave her a new e-mail address and got her set up again. She's been having a great time messaging her dad and keeping in touch with people from near and far, especially ones she met over the summer at SVI. Some of her old friends posted how glad they were to see her back on Facebook, and some asked why she'd been gone. I particularly liked this exchange with an older friend from aikido:

Day off work

Erin's day off work is laundry day for her work shirts. The place she works is great. It's a little café / gallery / gift shop that has great food as well as great staff shirts. It's at the T-intersection of the two secondary "highways" in town, and gets lots of tourist traffic. But it also has a loyal following of locals, many of the funky/artsy persuasion.

She scoops ice cream, makes lattés, washes dishes, cleans, works the till. She knows more people in town than I do now by a long shot. Her boss is a great first employer: fun, but direct and prescriptive about responsibilities and expectations. Erin, who wouldn't open her mouth in public for the first six or eight years of her life is now a cheerful, chatty service-industry worker.

Erin has been working here for over a year now. During the winters she works a shift a week. During tourist season it's several shifts a week, up to 30 hours a week. Last year she saved up and bought herself a laptop. (It recently gave her the blue screen of death. She offered Noah $20 to fix it, which he did. I'm not sure if she paid up.) This year she's developed a sudden burning desire for an electric violin. Perhaps that's what she'll spend her money on.

In the meantime I'm working on getting her to take responsibility for her own Day-Off Laundry.

Trail ride

Who needs a Van de Graaff generator? This is Erin's hair after (a) a short hard mountain-bike ride (b) a shower and (c) lying about in the sun on the static-electricity-generating trampoline for 45 minutes.

She's an awesome mountain-biking buddy. Enjoys going fast on the narrow single-track we've got around here. Has lots of stamina. Doesn't complain about anything the trail thrusts in her path. So far she's using Noah's bike, but has designs on a nice model of her own. Today we rode out to the top of the linear park / trail that runs through the canyon near our house, and then rode it down all the way to town. It's a route I run pretty regularly but it's a totally different experience on a bike with speed on your side and so many fun obstacles and woop-de-doos up banks and around tight curves. Crossed the cable-car, zipped over bridges and boardwalks and deked between boulders and old railway ties. We planned our route to avoid the blow-down we had to carry our bikes over last weekend. Nothing like scrambling through brush and climbing over massive logs up a 20-degree slope ... while lifting a bicycle over every obstruction, pedals catching on everything.

My purchased-used-20-years-ago Stumpjumper got a tune-up yesterday and despite a couple of seized adjustment screws seems to have a few more miles on it yet. I have to kick the chain into the inner two cassette rings with my foot but mostly I just avoid those gears. Maybe next year will be my buy-a-bike year. There's been such an evolution in mountain-bikes over the past 20 years; I've never even tried front shocks, an innovation my kids take for granted.

Lawn boy

At home, where we have an acre of grass and a little Toro tractor, he does it as a ride-on deal. Fortunately for us he mows willingly and without pay, despite having to drive through the curtains of wee green worms dangling from the fruit trees. I think he mostly likes driving.

In town, though, he's using push mowers and mowing other people's lawns for money. As usual he needed a bit of a nudge to take on this new role, but he's now happily into it and is enjoying the income and the sense of responsibility.

Eva

We're getting some work done on the van this week. A lot of work, considering it's a 2005 Toyota. Replacing one sliding door. Replacing the latch on another door. Doing the brakes, again. Pulling the whole front end apart to replace both hub joints or something. We'll defer the catalytic converter replacement until next time. Routine servicing on top of all this.

Anyway, the dealership is 90 minutes away and some of the work involves co-ordinating with a body shop, so it's going to take a while and they promised me a courtesy car for the week. This is the car they gave me, the one with the EVA license plate.

They are definitely on to something using Priuses (Prii?) as courtesy cars. Yeah, I feel like a mobile billboard, but I'm in love. I'm wandering around intoning "Eva" just like Wall-E in the movie. I take people for rides. I brag at the convenience store about my loaner and how much I love it. I take perverse delight in putting $20 in gas in the tank and knowing it'll last me the whole week, including the trips back and forth to Nelson.

Our Sienna has its limitations. It has little ground clearance, and it doesn't have AWD. The Prius doesn't address either of those concerns. But it does get double the gas mileage. And it is so freaking cool! It has a power button and proximity security rather than an ignition key-switch. It has satellite radio and a direct connection for my iPod. It is dead silent. It has a back-up camera and an auto-dimming rear-view mirror.

Eeeevah.