Transportation Update

Just over a month ago I finally got another car (a miserable thing to do on one's birthday, but that's how the schedule worked). I'd had my old one just about 10 years.

Good-bye

Hello

Stats at the changing of the keys:
1990 Honda Accord LX 253,062.9 miles
2010 Honda Civic VP 35,534 miles

In some ways I was very sorry to part with my old car. I drove it long distances around New Mexico - to my first ever camping trip by the Gila Cliff Dwellings near Silver City, and to Santa Fe and Taos and Roswell. It drove in AND out of Chaco Canyon, and up through Navajo Country; Hovenweep and Arches National Monument in Utah, and Mesa Verde in Colorado. I drove it when I moved from Las Cruces to Portland, Oregon, and I drove it on a trip up to Canada, and on a bunch of SCA camping trips in Oregon and Washington. I moved four times while I had it.

And gradually, things stopped working...it is now nice to have heat, defogging, an overhead light, a non-leaky trunk and glove compartment, and to not be worried about (is that my tie-rod end about to go)??? The Civic is a *really* basic model...I kind of miss my automatic locks (really? There are new cars with push-it-by-hand locks?) but it is nice to have heat and defogging. And it is much peppier to drive, and has an excellently small turning radius.

One week and one day since losing the beloved kitty.


The last few weeks have been very crummy anyway. Missing Princess makes it worse except that the ongoing obsessive worry about her health is over.

Fare Thee Well Princess

I have two blog posts planned but not done, and this is not one of them. Today my sweet kitty died. The last few months have been a gift - once food & medication were solved, she ended up having a lot of really good time, especially the last few weeks. She napped in different places, looked out the door a lot and went out on a few balcony patrols (yesterday was a good one). She collected me in the morning and at bedtime and even went to bed before me a few nights, climbing up her "stairs" of boxes since she wasn't very springy for the last month or so.

She had a nifty tent box the last few weeks, but recently felt good enough to come hang out near me like usual instead of in the box, whenever I would actually sit still for more than 40 seconds.



Fluffy banner tail enthusiastic kitty explored the box yesterday when I trimmed off the in-the-way flaps. (They were only in the way for a human, not a kitty.)


(It's really hard to draw kitties, especially from memory, but you get the idea; the second sketch is better proportioned.)

So she had quality days until today, when she succumbed to the non-food-related health problem (she was at least 16, and may have had a stroke at some point). I'm glad she didn't linger but I'm going to miss her so much.