MINI Winter Wonderland

The MINI is broken in, in more (good) ways than one:

• It's past it's primary break in period of 1250 miles.
  
  
• I was over on the local suburban shopping mall strip, where you have parking lots emptying into a highway with a speed limit of 50 MPH. Thus merging in with zero runway (a short field takeoff) is often needed. The MINI handled it nicely, with the DSC (traction control) kicking in on dry pavement.
  

  (Okay, it was like a leap to hyperspace with traction control. You got a problem with that?)
  

• Our own sloping driveway had just enough snow that the Miata might have slid on it. The MINI, however, kicked in the DSC again to keep me gently moving.
  
  
• With the Audi being serviced, the MINI had to do an airport run to rescue Katherine returning from DC. Of course it fit Katherine, but it also fit her business luggage. Not something we even considered doing in the Miata.
  

Happy MINI owners.

All I Want For Christmas

All I want for Christmas is to ban drum machines from recorded holiday music.

The Loudest Christmas Carol in the World

Magic 106.7, a soft rock station, has switched to Christmas music for the season. This does not mean they have gone far from their usual format.

However, they may have caused at least some loyal listeners question their radio tuning, because they played the TSO's Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24. The TSO, in case you don't know, is something on the order of AC/DC meets the Boston Pops ... and AC/DC wins.

I like the TSO. I've seen the TSO in person and enjoyed it (except for the hearing loss). They and the average Magic 106.7 listener are not from the same planet. In fact, Magic 106.7 may have caused some listeners to flee this planet.

Failure to Communicate

Our snowblower dealer has a service contract to do the routine service on our snow blower every year before the season starts. Last year, they automatically scheduled the pick up and delivery of our blower nice and early so it was ready when the weather was.

This year, it wasn't until the past week we realized that they never called. We looked at their web site and discovered they had closed the nearest location without telling us. More importantly, they failed to call us from a remaining location to arrange the service.

They should pick the blower up today. Unfortunately, their one day service will now take three weeks because they didn't do it before the season.

We're not happy.

Pray for a warm December.

PSA time again

Just a remember, the real blogging action around here is over on our other blog, the Summerhill Kitten Farm. Just trust me on this one, okay.

It's Here! It's Here!

Our new Cooper MINI S arrived a week ago. It's as the original pictures show, except it tends to have Katherine or I driving it. It's as fun as the Miata was but has more height, front wheel drive, traction control, better headlights, glass rear window, and other stuff which will make a better second winter car.

The all wheel drive Audi will still get any winter runs up into NY or PA snow country.

It's also faster, but that doesn't make it a better winter car. :-)

It also has a rear seat, but I am not sure even our 10 year old niece would have enough leg room. It's best left for cargo (which is still a major improvement on the Miata).

We saw the our former Miata yesterday, BTW. We sold it to friends at the start of the month, and in spite of the wet New England fall they have had the top down a fair amount, and enjoying it a lot. Yesterday the Miata led the MINI down some rather twisty roads to lunch, making for a pair of happy putt-putts.

As an aside, we discovered in the period between the Miata leaving and the MINI arriving that we are NOT a one car couple. Between the infrequent suburban bus service and the general hub & spoke layout of Boston area transit, it just doesn't work out for us ...

I want my MTV

Back in August or so, we ordered a new car from Herb Chambers MINI of Boston, a 2006 MINI Cooper S convertible. (You can see pictures of the ordered configuration). We considered one off the lot, but I wanted a few things, like the particular color (British Racing Green), and I was willing to wait. And besides, our 1997 Miata was running fine, it's not like we NEEDED the car instantly. Estimated delivery was sometime in October.

Fast forward to ~ 2 weeks ago. The car was confirmed to have been built in England, in transit, and on schedule. We offered the Miata up for sale, and delivered it to friends who snapped it up. So we canceled the Miata insurance, and while we were at it we told our insurance to be ready for a call from the dealer.

So by this week we're limping along (not badly) on one car. But that's okay, our regular dealer updates are consistently telling us the car is due this week. I checked Monday and the car was in port in NJ, by their estimate it would be a day to install an alarm and one to three days to ship up here. That put the car here between today (Wednesday) and Friday.

Yesterday, I got down to the credit union and picked up a rather large check to pay for this puppy. Having that paper just sitting around makes me nervous. But we're ready to rock.

Only now it seems our dealer was full of guano, I checked today and after calling NJ they figured out the alarm is actually a delay of 5 to 7 working days. So the car which was supposed to be here this week won't here until early next week at the earliest.

There goes my weekend plans (I was actually going to take Friday off and toddle about in our new toy), and generally pulls a rug out from under my happy mood. It's like I've been stood up on a date.

It doesn't make me feel better that it is utterly stupid to be disappointed:

• Small car, but big toy.
• The last car we ordered (5 years ago) also got hung up in port for almost two weeks. We half expected this.
• We'll have the car for years, a week doesn't matter.
• People have bigger problems that than this (like being broke or wearing a pager because they are waiting for a organ transplant)

But I am disappointed, and maybe a little full of self-pity. Ain't life grand?