We bought our mini van this weekend. It's green. A shiny silver green Special K says. The kids played it in for over an hour. A vehicle that we can all literally move around is novel to us all. At some point I will provide a photo but no idea when.

The electronics baffle both me and my husband despite our years of software engineering training. But the kids of course figured out right away that it has a DVD player.

I would like the car to not ask me to say California every time I want to input directions especially as it tends to add another C state like CT. And it's not just my slight English accent. It can't understand C either who speaks perfect American.

C and I both feel incredibly bourgeois. Yet I have to say that I love heated leather seats. Now I don't know what I did without them. It soothes me when the kids scream in the background.

Thanks for all your comments and voting on my mini-van color. I appreciate it. I'm less sure about the color now but also feel in a different head-space now.

I just passed my written and vision test today for my driver's license as I have to every five years.

I watched a lady in a walker take the same test. It made me feel better and worse. Better because it seems as far as the DMV is concerned I don't think it matters what disability you have they cover themselves by having you take a written and vision test unless you prove to be a bad driver and require the expense of a driving test.

And worse because I don't know about you but I think every time before I drive "Am I up for this?" I never take driving for granted. It's a privilege I have that I lost for a while. Not because of the DMV but because it made my wrists hurt too much.

Some people never think about what a privilege driving is. And how so many people around the world don't have it because they can't afford a car.

I'm glad I had that moment of reflection.

Please answer this very important color poll as I will have to look at this mini-van for the next 10 years. :) Well okay we already ordered the color and C wants light colors only so I didn't show all the colors and I'm already worried about it. :)
Poll #1084207 Mini-vain color
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which color/s do you like best

I also wanted to say that I finally crossed a big item off my to-do list. I got the leak fixed in the Civic. No more rain leaking into the Civic. It's raining outside but no more rain will get inside that car! Hooray!

It turned out the rain was leaking in the gaskets around the tailights. Apparently a pretty common problem with Civics. If you're around Mountain View and need any type of body work done on your car, I highly recommend Fenders Collision. They do good honest work for a reasonable fee. I originally went to them with my Passat for thousands of dollars of work paid for by my insurance. Of course the insurance chose them. But they were super nice and did a great job and also fixed a couple of minor things for free. So I came back when I backed into a pillar at the hospital and smashed the Passat's passenger side mirror. They replaced the mirror for not much money. They seemed pained that I refused to get the mirror painted or the side of the car, but it seemed more like an asethetic thing than a money thing. For me, it was more that if I did it once, I was likely to do it again, and I'd be more annoyed with myself if I paid to have it repainted and then scraped it again. And yeah I'm cheap

And so I just brought in my leaking Civic and said "please fix the leak." And so they did just that without taking advantage of the fact that the Civic is kinda dinged up and missing a side fender and has cracks in the back and front bumpers.

Little T has finally grown out of his infant car seat. C and I debated whether to graduate Special K to a booster seat. She weighs just over 30lb and is about 38 inches tall, so she just about qualifies for the Britax Parkway. It costs $89 at http://www.babyage.com while a car seat costs $230. Special K has more freedom to move around in a booster seat. However a booster seat is easier to install wrong and can be less safe.

In the end we decided to buy the booster seat and use it as the spare car seat. Our nanny uses this seat to take Special K to gym and for occasional other trips. Right now our spare car seat is a Britax Roundabout. We'll put Little T in the Roundabout. By the time Little T grows out of the Roundabout, we should be comfortable having Special K in a booster seat full-time.

It amazes me how stressed out I got making this decision. I'm the parent banned from a group of mothers for letting Special K eat sand. Yet I got scared when I read sites that "Children should be get in harness restraints as long as possible." and "children under 4 should not ride in booster seats." Also two years ago our car was rear-ended by two cars in a car pileup. Special K was just under 1. WS and I both had back injuries that required treatment while Special K escaped unharmed.

According to the Washington Post, smaller cars are flying off the lots, though it doesn't separate hybrid from non-hybrid cars. All I know is everywhere I look around here I see Priuses. The Economist calls the Prius ugly, but I find it strangely beautiful. I blogged about my Prius envy.

Honda came out with a Honda Hybrid Accord
so Toyota's fighting back with a Toyota Hybrid Camry next year. Unfortunately it's not being produced in Fremont. But where's the Toyota hybrid mini-van supposedly coming in 2007 according to Hybrid cars.com . No-where in sight. It will probably depend on how the Prius and Camry sell. I guess the universe is telling me we don't need actually need one.

Sometimes I think I should move back to England when I read headlines like: Junk food to be banned in schools Of course I suppose the kids could sneak off campus and buy food outside, but it's a lot harder and takes exercise and ingenuity.

And last but not least, the Washington Post reports the first images of a giant squid. It seems they were pretty cruel to the poor creature to capture the image and in the end the creature lost one of its limbs. CNN has a video. At the end of the video, the scientist blithely says the squid is in no danger of dying from losing its tentacle and yet at the beginning of the video, they said they know very little about the giant squid. Typical arrogance of scientists. I hope the big squid is okay and can still capture its prey.

On Saturday night, my husband C and I first went to the 25th anniversary of Acme Theatre Company from my hs. I met some old friends and had a great time. Most were married and had kids and had returned to Davis. It's called "returning home to spawn." Elizabeth is now a freelance writer with her husband and call themselves Write The First Time. Anton lives on a horse ranch nearby and still welds. Sarah is a systems engineer.

Analisa is an energy state government official and showed us the prototype of a fuel cell car which she finangled. She drove it around for the weekend, then it'll go to the people in her department then to politicians. C said seeing her car was the highlight of the weekend and it was really cool.

Analisa met us at the high school reunion and we wandered around. Unfortunately apart from Malcolm Young whom I'd met earlier, I didn't see anyone I was actually friends with in hs, except Cheryl Washino whom I was friends with at the beginning of hs, but then we drifted apart. I talked to her for a bit. She was still really nice, but I ran out of things to say.

I met some classmates at St. James Catholic school where I went for grades 6-9. I had nice chats with all of them. Nothing earthshattering. One woman said something about how I wrote this great book report and the class liked it so much that they asked me to read it again. I don't remember it all. In fact I wouldn't have remembered her or the fact that she was at St. James if she hadn't reminded me. I was a total nerd and social outcast at St. James. I was 1 of 10 girls and the rest all glommed together. They're just a mass in my mind, not even real people now since I assume they've grown up now and know better. That's not to say that everyone from that era isn't real, just the people who were only mean to me and nothing else.

I did have one weird interaction with someone I vaguely recognised who turned away from me while I was in the same group. I think she must have been one of the folks in hs who thought I was stupid, because I have a movement disorder. I remembered that contingent when she did it. I was disappointed, because my 10 year reunion was unmarred by such incidents. I thought I remember her name, but when I looked in the yearbook, there was no such name.

The main theme for me was that pretty much everyone ends up at the same place. In hs I was still pretty shy and learning social skills. But I always knew that I'd grow up and life would get better.

And the highlight of my evening was dancing with C. We haven't danced just the two of us in a while.

I saw an infomercial for Hey Horn, a horn that sounds like a clown horn. The entire web site amused me.

Torin might be going home tomorrow....again The docs have decided not to send him home with Amikacin the troublesome antibiotic, because they can't get a therapeutic dose after 3 days of trying. So they're switching him to a different antibiotic, Meropenem which doesn't have to be tested for dosage and doesn't need to be combined with another antibiotic. I asked the resident why they hadn't switched him before. She claimed that the Oncology doctor didn't know Meropenem was effective against Enterobacter cloacae, the bacteria that infected his Broviac.

C did a google search on it and the info wasn't good. I took a look now and E-Medicine article's info on mortality and bacteremia(infection of bacteria in the blood stream) was particularly scary. But he's doing great now!

When I was backing out from the garage on Friday, I banged the passenger side mirror into a pole. Normally the mirror bends if you hit the mirror going forward, but as I was backing up, it couldn't and smashed. Is it bad luck to break a car mirror? What do you think? The cover also came off. I was very annoyed, mostly because it has to be repaired within a few days. Just one more thing I have to do. The glass of the mirror (albeit safety glass) has shattered and the electronics to move the mirror are now exposed. The pole also made a large cream coloured scrape on the passenger side door. I won't fix that. It'll be a wonderful souvenir of T's latest hospital stay. And the wonderful garage. The garage with tiny spaces marked "compact" that SUVs park in, because the spaces not marked compact are usually full. And yes, I banged my more-compact-than-an-SUV Passat in a compact space.

Even if Torin gets discharged tomorrow, I'll still visit that garage many more times this week. I have to take Little T for various medical apts on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Here's his schedule:
Monday - Renal ultrasound and consult with doctor (probably going to be done in-patient)
Tuesday - Upper GI Scan. No eating for hours = crabby Torin
Wednesday - OT apt
Thursday - GI Clinic

It makes me exhausted just thinking about it. Maybe tomorrow when he's actually home, I'll feel better about it. Or he'll still be inpatient, so I won't have to take him to his Tuesday apts. I'll still have to park in the garage though.

It seems like everyone around us is buying a Prius! One of the mothers in my book group has the original one. But this round of Prius envy all started when my friend Andrea drove me in hers and showed it off to me. I had no idea the new Prius was a hatchback! I love riding hatchback. I've developed a serious case of Prius envy. Then my friend Jed blogged about his shiny new Prius complete with pictures. Our next door neighbours are buying one. Another friend talked to me about buying one.

If the new Prius had been out in 2002 when it was time for us to buy a 4 door sedan, we'd have probably bought a Prius. But the old one was a little too small in girth for two car seats. We're waiting for the Toyota Sienna hybrid minivan "expected in 2007" according to Hybrid Cars.com

But of course on the Internet, you can always find folks more obssessed than you. A google search of "Prius envy" revealed a Prius fan site complete with videos, photos and a log book with over 200 pages, which asked the question. "Do Hybrids save money?" and as part of the answer, another question "Why must you be rewarded (save money) by using less resources and polluting less?". My answer is because we live in a capitalist society where things are valued according to money. The real question is: Why are gas and clean air so undervalued that owning a Prius is more expensive than owning a regular car? I believe gas and clean air and a lot of other enviromental "goods" are undervalued due to government subsidies to industries, and regulations that in reality require industries to pay only a fraction of the true cost of cleaning up their pollution.

But we'll drive our Passat for many more days, because VW fixed the trunk latch under warranty. No more dinging!

Our Passat chimes ding, a fairly pleasant high-pitched single electronic bell sound. Unfortunately it closely resembles the sound of the main monitors in the NICU where Little T spent his first 6 weeks. And it dings a lot, so it grates on our nerves. The trunk latch is broken, so when the car hits any kind of rough patch, the trunk opens slightly and the Passat chimes a warning.

So this morning we took our Passat into our local dealership. There, I discovered there's yet another recall on our Passat -- three in three years. They're performing a software upgrade on the TCM, a computer module involved with the transmission. I'm never getting another Passat ever again.