Marvelous Monday: Week 46

What a weekend!

On Saturday, Josh and I drove all over the metro area. On Sunday, we thought about what we'd seen.

And today we bought a car for me!

I said goodbye to my 2000 Mazda Protege, which accompanied me for 60,000 miles from age 21 to 29. I bought it in the summer before my junior year of college and learned how to drive a stick shift en route to my first internship, in downtown St. Paul. (I might have acquired its first dent in the parking ramp for said internship, when I may have forgotten to put on the emergency brake, looked back as I walked into work that day and saw the car rolling backwards toward a cement post.)

Nine years later, we've been trying to squeeze a few more miles out of it, but it had become increasingly less reliable (and as a result, especially in the winter, less safe). So I'll start my 30s with another Mazda - this time, a Mazda 3 - and I'm happy and grateful for the switch.

That is the highlight of Marvelous Monday, but here are five more tidbits:

1) Wish and I went for a run today. He was mildly patient all weekend with our car-related visits and research but needed to run off some energy, so we trotted around the neighborhood. We're building up his endurance.

2) The kitchen was hopping yesterday and I made smoky pulled pork tacos via the crockpot, quick minestrone for the week's lunches, and blondies (just for fun). And Josh made paninis!

3) I got my December Bon Appetit over the weekend and the cover features holiday cookie recipes.

4) It's going to be 50 degrees tomorrow!

5) I have been delving into the wonderful world of stencils and will tell you about that project soon.

What's marvelous about the start of your week, Reader? What's your favorite holiday cookie? And what was your first (or favorite) car?

Marvelous Monday: Week 19

There was some marvelous commerce to report from this weekend.

1) First and most importantly, I got four marvelous new tires for my car yesterday, after a flat tire threw the smallest of wrenches in the weekend. So safe!  So new!  So shiny!

No holes!

2) And I got a new coffeemaker. I am very, very, very excited about this and didn't realize just how, well, vile my old one was until I set up my new one. We opened the new box and I brought it into the kitchen and imagined that the old one was quivering with fear about being replaced. I said to Josh, who was relaxing peacefully in the living room, "Come here, the old coffee maker looks really scared!" and then realized that I sounded even more absurd than usual.

3) And more commerce: on Saturday, I stopped at garage sales during my long run.  (This was a first for me, I think.) Fortunately for the sake of my long run, I didn't buy anything until the last stop. I came back home a dollar lighter but newly equipped with a short vase and a black picture frame. (I'm slowly collecting black frames for a project.) My mom used to make us tag along to garage sales on Thursdays and I totally never got it until now.  They are fun!

4) Okay, enough with the shopping tidbits. I made it to yoga this morning before work!

5) I am just about to go have frozen yogurt with all kinds of fixins'.  Right now!  Bye!

But P.S. Hearty greetings to the readers who found my blog by googling "urban setting with sunlight" and "dessert land blog." You've both come to the right place for sure!

seen on my walk tonight

Driving a car (or lack thereof)

It's somewhat fitting that my car decided that an impromptu trip to the shop was just the ticket yesterday, because it's Bike/Walk to Work Week in the Twin Cities. Many friends and family know I am pretty disinterested in driving my car, a sweet little 2000 Mazda Protege that really doesn't deserve any ill will or neglect. I know many people who have cars either simply enjoy driving or correctly choose to drive to work via a cost-benefit analysis. It's just that it feels kind of strange to depend on a car when most days of the week, it's not a necessity to me, given where I am both in life stage (no children) and neighborhood (more on this below). Given a choice, I'm usually walking or biking.

In December, the alternator went out the day before a work trip to California. Most sensible people would have dropped it in the shop and retrieved it upon return, but I waited until April, when my dad started asking me gently if I was still paying insurance on it (yes) and also when Josh and I completed the painstaking (but now funny) task of charging my battery multiple times for the mile-long trip to the repair shop and pushing my car with his car when that didn't work.

My car has been back in action ever since, but during its hiatus, I got used to walking or busing home from work this winter, and Josh and I grew to actually enjoy the drive together in the morning.  I am lucky to live in a neighborhood with well-maintained and constant sidewalk presence, bike lanes on the major route to work, and a dependable bus line that drops me three blocks from my front door. Of course, once I got my car back, I slid back into the comfortable routine of driving when post-work social engagements or errands presented themselves, instead of being creative about how to walk/bike/bus myself there.

On Tuesday, the hottest day in Minnesota since 1988, I was cruising along the St. Paul streets en route to an ice cream cone.  My car had been making a finicky squealing noise for the past couple of weeks, and it had worsened to the point that I was planning to be proactive reasonable and actually take it into the shop to get it checked.  As I was driving, I noticed that the battery light had flashed on. "Oh, it's just hot out," I thought, glancing at the temperature gauge to confirm that I was okay. Two minutes later, the temperature gauge meter was waving way at the top, at the hottest part.  Oh, bugger.  I pulled into my parking spot at home without stalling or incurring any other noticeable mishaps and was in for the night, with plans to drive it to the repair shop in the morning if the battery light was still on.

The next morning, I jumped into my car, which still had the battery light flashing but started up cheerfully. I even noticed on the way to the shop that the squealing had stopped, and I identified that as a serendipitous little silver lining and a sure sign that things would be okay. The mechanic told me that I definitely shouldn't drive on it, they'd run a diagnostic check, and would let me know the course of action later in the day.

Later, my phone rang, and the man informed that my belt had stopped squealing, well, because it had plain ol' fallen off.

Some car intuition I've got, huh?  Anyway, the car's fixed now, and that small misjudgment is in the rearview mirror. (Yes, I went there.) The thing is, part of knowing me (and by extension, Miles and Laurel, which sort of makes Miles and Laurel sound like alteregos) is to know that I derive a lot of joy out of walking the streets of my neighborhood. A walk home energizes me and lets me people-watch and neighborhood-watch in a different way than when I run, and definitely in a different way than when I drive. I am grateful to be in a place where I love both my work and my home, and very lucky that they (along with  friends, the library, the gym, and the local Target) are within an easy walk, bike, or bus.  But I hope from now on that I'll know the signs for when the belt's about to break, too.