I'm leavin' on a tra-ain . . .

It doesn't work quite as well as the whole leavin' on a jet plane thing does it? I left Sunday to go home for Christmas. And boy has it been an interesting trip.

Sunday in Portland was snowy. Portland got about half an inch of snow or so. Of course that pretty much means that the entire city got shut down. Because you know, Portland doesn't get snow. They don't have snowplows. I don't think they even salt or sand the roads. People run to the store and fight over things like bread and milk and toilet paper. It's like NC all over again. So Jeff and I left a little bit early to get to the train station thinking it would take a bit of extra time.

The smart handled very well in the snow. But it wasn't really that bad, all things considered. I'm sure Portland-ites think it was bad. I know that for a fact, actually, because once we got close to Portland there were signs saying that chains were required in the metro area. Jeff and I laughed the whole way into town after seeing four wheel drive trucks pull over to put tires on their trucks with the whole half an inch of snow on the ground. *snorts* It seems I'm still giggling about it. :)

So right now I'm just outside of Grand Springs, Colorado. The ride has been absolutely amazing so far. It's pretty much been snowy everywhere I've been, except for Sacramento. Portland is beautiful without snow, but it's amazing with snow. The Sierra Nevada Mountains and plateaus and canyons and gorges are beautiful without snow. But they're incredible with. I can't wait until I get into Denver tonight. Going through the Rockies is going to be fun!

I would like to thank my awesome Jeff for rigging up a method of making my phone work as my modem for my laptop. As long as I have cell service I have dial-up speeds or faster internet for the most part. It's not perfect and doesn't always work. But it's been good enough so far!

All right, first things first.

In early November, we got a car.



This is Homer. He's a smart fortwo Passion. He has heated seats. See how little he is compared to a Taurus? I love to parallel park him. And that's saying a lot because normally I don't parallel park. I just keep driving around until I find a spot I don't have to do that in.


See the panoramic roof? It pretty much covers the whole top of the car. It doesn't open which is why we don't currently have two passions. Instead we just have Homer and will soon have an order in on a cabriolet. What? Homer needs a friend to keep him company in the parking spot. Did you know you can fit two smarts in the same spot? You can also fit them in a parking spot sideways. We haven't done that yet. But we did make our own parking spot the other night and probably ticked somebody off because they parked poorly and thought they could get away with it.


There's a lot of room in there. Homer is mostly Jeff's. They didn't have a smart that I wanted in stock. Not exactly, anyway. But they had one coming in that Jeff would have chosen for himself if he'd had one built so we went with it. Homer is super fun to drive. He has a manual transmission that's controlled by a computer. Which means we get over 30mpg in town and 4o on the highway. And if we want to shift we can, but we certainly don't have to. And there's no clutch or any of that rolling-backwards-down-a-hill-so-you-can-go-up-it-after-being-stopped-business.

Why is it named Homer?

Because it is a smart. S-M-R-T. That's what I hope to get on a license plate. ;)