Saying goodbye

Over the last few months, Emilee and I have been preparing for our upcoming journey to Connecticut - putting stuff into storage, spending time with friends and family in the area, going to the Hogle Zoo one last time, etc. As we get closer to the time of departure (only a few more weeks now), we're coping with the emotions times like these bring. In the midst of this, we have had a sudden blow. As previously mentioned, our old car, Virginia, died on us. At the time, this was a worrying inconvenience which, thanks to my parents, had a fairly rapid solution - we now drive their 2006 minivan.

Today, however, we had to say goodbye. I called an auto wrecking shop and, feeling like Judas Iscariot, signed away my old friend for a few silvers. I followed her to her resting place, her headlights looking back at me from the back of the truck as I drove. We reached the yard and the doors opened, revealing a yard full of wrecked bodies and hacked-off engines. And there, with tears in my eyes, I bade her my final farewell. I retrieved her new tires, the forklift hauled her away and the gates closed on her forever.

It's silly to invest so much emotion in a car - it's an inanimate object, after all - but she's been part of our family for 3 years, our companion through our greatest adventures. She's bailed out friends, escaped fires and survived so much, only to be destroyed from the inside by rusted antifreeze and sold to men who will destroy her without remorse or feeling. She deserves better, somehow and it breaks my heart to leave her to die.

I need a kitty.

Why are you here?

If you visit this blog on a regular basis, you're probably a family member or, at least, a close friend. There are many people who stumble across here for other reasons, though. Some recent things people have come here looking for include:

Wii related questions:
How to thrust nunchuck forward
Assorted Wii game reviews

Random search terms
Disney Pixar short Slightly Cloudy
Skit about LDS Pioneers
Helpless Superheroines

Pictures
The Blue Whale bones at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History
The Fireworks Stand


One of the odd search items that brings people here most frequently is Vibroman, usually searched for from Spanish-speaking countries. Could it be that I have tapped into some cultural icon by accident? Searching for it on my own turns up very little. On the other hand, maybe I don't want to know what lies deeper on this one.

A blessed? event

She's been in a delicate state for quite some time. But now, it's all said and done - the anxiety, the almost weekly checkups, the moodiness - they're all behind us now. On Saturday, her water broke after we got back from work and we rushed her in. That's right, folks, we're the proud parents of a new car!

What, you thought I was talking about something else?

For those of you unfamiliar with our recent troubles with Virginia, this has been a long time in coming. It started with some expensive and complex repairs at the beginning of the year. Then we had more fixes for the Safety and Emissions checks, a process which took weeks of going to Ray's on a daily basis (as described earlier) and left some major problems unresolved. On Saturday, after dropping Emilee off at work, I was staying with my friends Ryan and Becky Sultana who were going to borrow the car and take it to work, where Emilee would then retrieve it to come home. Little did we know that they would come outside to pick it up and see this: Calling it a mess would be a severe understatement. Orange/brown fluid had made a large trail under the car. This turned out to be bad antifreeze mingled with rust. The nearby mechanic told us the damage would take $600-900 to repair. I called Ray and he said he could do it a little more cheaply, but towing her back to Provo is out of the question. And so, the time has come to say goodbye to our little lady.

Virginia Seville Watson
1990-June 27, 2009
Rust In Peace

P.S. More pictures (and the resolution to our story) forthcoming.