Job's Not Over Till the Paperwork is Done

Our Job of acquiring Zesty is now complete. Just under 14 years ago, Oscar and Penwiper inspected the new plates for for Purr More the Green and the Bronze Audi.

Inspecting the "new" plates back 2012

The PURRMOR plates have graced three MINI Cooper S convertibles, nearly half of it on the 2019 Caribbean Aqua one.

The MEOWLES plates only lived on the 2009 Bronze Audi A4 until now, but forthwith they will be on our 2023 Zesty Yellow MINI Cooper S 4-door.

Sisters Meow Less the Zesty and Purr More the Aqua tucked into their garage

Note: Zesty's name is simply Zesty, not Zesty the Yellow. We love her color, but she does not want it even implied that she is a lemon in the manner of the long-departed Purr More the Melting Silver.

Out With the Old, In With the Gently Used

It's getting time to replace our 16 1/2 year-old Audi A4, and I'm doing something that I've never done in the 44 years I've been buying cars: Buy a used one. We are also buying a second car that's the same brand as the first (as opposed to replacing a car with the same brand). 

Basically, new shiny cars from both Audi and MINI (including dealer loaners) have a plethora of touchscreen controls on glass dashboards (Katherine's term is FGD — and the F is NOT silent.) Neither Katherine or I want controls you have to look at to manipulate; we want physical knobs and switches that you can adjust by touch while you keep your eyes on the road.

Given I don't drive much these days and don't need cargo space for more than groceries, I could look at getting a gently used MINI Cooper S two door. However, with our policy of one door per passenger, we don't take passengers in Pure More the Aqua (our 2019 MINI Cooper S 2 door convertible). So on my side of the garage we need at at least a 4 door MINI for passengers.

From the dealer we bought our last two new MINI Cooper S rag tops from, I selected a low mileage 2023 Cooper S 4 door (not a Countryman) that's the same generation as Purr More.

2023 Zesty Yellow MINI Cooper S 4 Door Exterior

The obvious differences with Purr More are the color, hard top, four doors, DCT transmission, digital instrument cluster, no head up display, and no navigation system. (However, apparently Apple CarPlay will talk to Apple Maps or even Google Maps on my iPhone.)

2023 MINI Cooper S 4 Door FGD-free cockpit

And oh yes, it's ~two-thirds the price of a new MINI.

(I have to admit, the color sounds like a dipping sauce for Onion Rings at Burger King.)

Update: This post was originally written as an adventure in progress. It's now complete. The Audi is gone (traded in), and the 2023 MINI is sitting in our garage next to Purrmore the Caribbean Aqua.

 Back when we lived in Stoneham, we once ended up with too many packages of your basic Morton Salt. It was referred to as the Salt problem. Ever since then, when we have an excessive inventory of anything X, we refer to it as the X problem.

These days, I have the Headphone problem.

I have:

• (At least) two ancient corded (DiscMan era) headphones in my closet (I'm afraid to look, actually)
• A corded USB headset in my closet
• High end corded Sennheiser headphones issued to me when I joined Google (under the stereo downstairs)
• Sennheiser 550-X BT noise canceling headphones I bought when I moved into a zoo of an office after five years at Google (they now live in my largest backpack)
• Soundcore noise canceling headphones I bought last year when I had trouble replacing the ear pads on the Sennheiser 550-X (since fixed)
• A cheap Motorola BT headset at my desk
• 3 cheap BT earbuds for my smaller EDC bags (never mind I only have two smaller bags)
• A pair of PowerBeats Pro earbuds I didn't like and gave to Katherine.

But I mostly use:

• Kipsch wired speakers on my Mac Studio
• My networked Yamaha office stereo
• A Motorola HX550 Bluetooth Headset I use for iPhone calls at my desk.
• Altec Lansing BT Boombox when on my exercise bike