Saturday was a very car-oriented day, which is funny for someone who tries to keep his car use to a minimum. But my own ratbox of a car, an ’86 Honda Civic with 176,000 miles and a weird smell, is facing repairs that are probably worth more than the car. It’s at this point that I start thinking about buying a new car. And, though money is always tight, I’m not just thinking about a new-to-me car, I’m thinking about a new-new car.

So Gwen, who is considering replacing her Honda as well (though not with as much urgency), and I went car-shopping yesterday, an errand made more convenient because our short-lists are identical. There are financing deals in the air, so it’s probably a good time to consider buying a new car.

We started at a very fancy luxury-car dealer in my neighborhood–it has Ferraris in the showroom. Obviously that’s not what I’m interested in: they’ve got a mini on the lot too. While we were looking at it, people in at least three other cars pulled over to check it out–some had obviously caught it out of the corner of their eyes, but one couple had made the trip specifically for mini-viewing. Nobody was looking at any Ferraris. The car is really cute, feels really well made and well designed. The back seats are laughable, but I guess that’s to be expected.

The problem is that minis are not officially being sold in Texas yet–this dealership bought the car retail (in Little Rock, I think), and trailered it back to Austin. They’re charging a hefty premium too–I think at least $6,000 above sticker, and if you ever needed warranty work, well, you’d have to go to Little Rock.

Next stop, VW. The Jetta Wagon was already first on my short-list of desired cars. A test-drive did nothing to change that. I drove a stick with a 1.8-l turbo engine, and was surprised at how smooth, quiet, and fast the car is. The car just seems really well put-together, good attention to detail. A telling example: the key is built into the remote-control fob. It’s on a sprung hinge, so it folds away to put it in your pocket. You press a little button on the fob and the key flips open like a switchblade. Slick. The whole car is like that.

Third stop, Mazda. We were both looking at the Protegé5, a fun-looking little wagon. The car was an ergonomic no-go for Gwen, who is short enough that when she’s driving, the relative positions of the seat, steering wheel, and stick make it so that she practically needs to reach behind herself to shift. I had no such problem with the car, but it was a letdown after driving the Jetta–it’s slower, louder, less refined, with less cargo space, poorer warranty, etc. Yes, it is a little cheaper, but the price difference isn’t enough to make up for its relative shortcomings. If I had driven the Protegé5 (yes, they really write it like that–the salesman abbreviated it to Pro5) first, I would have thought it was a nice enough car. Bad luck for Mazda I didn’t.

Then we went back to Gwen’s place, where I helped her wash and wax her car. It seemed so sad compared to the shiny, zippy cars we’d just been looking at. And don’t even get me started on my car.

Just got back from dinner at Hut’s Hamburgers with Drew.

There were a couple of strikingly beautiful young women at the table next to ours, but what’s weird is they were both wearing so much makeup, so badly applied, that it made them look genuinely hideous. Was it done as a gag? I have to wonder. They were with (I assume) their boyfriends, who were completely conventional-looking.

I’ve noticed that when returning to some kind of exercise after a hiatus, it’s not the day after that I feel stiff and sore–it’s two days after.

So it is now with running. Various minor aches and pains in my legs. But you know what? The pains are symmetrical. This is a good sign.

I just got back from a run.

This wouldn’t be news for most people, but everyone has a story. Mine is that on two separate occasions, I’ve broken my hip and my pelvis, and I’m still walking around with eleven screws and a plate in the left side of my pelvis from the latter accident. So ever since, I’ve been a bit leery about running. I tried it a bit after I recovered, and sure enough, it was kind of painful. So I backed off, thinking perhaps I needed more time to really recover, and I’d try again. Well, it’s been over two years since I last tried it, and over the past few days I’ve been talking myself into trying again. Tonight there was nothing else I particularly wanted to do, it was hot, and I’ve always enjoyed running on hot nights, so I pulled on the lycra and the shoes and went for a loop around the neighborhood. 1.7 miles. Not much distance, but OK for a start. I did feel a tiny sting on the outside point of my trochanter, but I consider that an annoying pain, not a worrisome pain. And a little tightness breathing, but that’s normal. Overall I felt pretty good.

We’ll see how I feel tomorrow. I want to be able to stick with it this time. I don’t like taking crap from my body.

Eeyore’s Birthday was held this past Saturday. I went for a couple hours, saw some of the usual suspects. Big hippie-freak fest.

I debated bringing my own camera, but it’s hard to just enjoy yourself when your trying to document everything.

This whole OS X upgrade thing is still consuming way too much of my time. I need to go for a bike ride.

Installing the update from 10.1 to 10.1.3 was a huge pain in the ass, since I had had the audacity to move some apps around. The updater couldn’t find them, and so installed “stubs” containing the modified resources (but not necessarily a complete app) where it did expect them. I wound up moving the new resources into the old apps, very carefully (yes, this is possible). Then I had to delete the old stuff, which turned out not to be very easy. Seems that there was an invisible file that really didn’t want to be deleted. I wound up breaking into Terminal and using sudo rm .recalcitrant_file to take care of it. There’s probably an easier way, but I’m not sure what.

Mail clients for OS X are also a pain in the ass. Capsule reviews of the apps I’ve tried:

Eudora

The OS X version of this, for me, is a step backwards because I can’t seem to make it support Japanese, and Steve Dorner’s team hasn’t gotten the internationalization message. Plus the fact that it’s still beta. How long has OS X been out now?

Mulberry

Ugly. Weird. I’m not a UI queen, but sheesh, I spend a lot of time in my mail client, and I don’t want to have to look at that.

Entourage

Slow and gimmicky (it’s from Microsoft, so this is not a surprise). I’ve also read that it starts going haywire when you have a really big mail database. Mine isn’t really big, but why risk it.

Sweetmail

This now has a beta version for OS X, but it won’t boot to my machine. Probably checking for a Japanese OS or something.

Powermail

In theory this does handle Japanese, but it failed to import my old Japanese messages from Eudora correctly, which is a problem. Perhaps it would have better luck extracting them by way of Mail.app.

Mailsmith

I love BBEdit, especially now that it has Japanese capability, but Mailsmith still doesn’t. It has lots of other virtues, but no Japanese=no good for me. I read some criticism somewhere that it’s too expensive. Get real. How much time do we spend on e-mail? Lots. If a product can make your life easier, it’s worth a few bucks.

So that leaves us with Mail.app, which is included. That’s what I’m currently using. It has embarrassingly weak filtering (“rules”) capabilities, and a distinct paucity of keyboard commands. But it seems to be fast and reliable. I’ll switch if I find something better though.

I upgraded to Mac OS X today. I have been in maximum geek-mode for about 6 hours now. You know its maximum geek-mode when you forget to eat, then you remember your hungry, and even then decide to defer dining.

OS X is…different. It’s very disorienting in hundreds of little ways, not to mention the fact that the guts are drastically different. I figure it’ll take me a week to come to a modus vivendi with it–getting it to work the way I like, and adjusting to the way it works. There is a lot I like about it already, and despite occasional complaints that it’s slow, I find that it is a) snappy, and b) pretty snappy even when I’m trying to do all kinds of things at once.

So I was making a fire-baton a couple days ago, and because I’m a klutz, jammed a phillips-head screwdriver into the web between my index finger and thumb. Ouch. Yesterday I went to the ER at Brackenridge to get a tetanus shot. (Interesting aside–I called a general practitioner’s office to ask if I should have them look at it. The receptionist said I should get a tetanus shot, and since there was a shortage of those right now, they didn’t have any, but the ER would. So I went there.) I waited about two and a half hours to get a shot that some guy practically administered as he walked past me. I asked a few people about the tissue damage, and they all seemed really unconcerned. One of them told me “hands heal up really fast.” So far, I’d have to agree, much to my surprise. The day after, I could barely hold anything in my grasp. Two days after, and I’ve got most of the strength back in my thumb.

Movies recently viewed:

• Y tu mamá también: very good on multiple levels.
• Five Corners: written by the same guy who wrote Moonstruck (which had a great script), this is quite a bit darker and more surprising.
• Ghost World: Very, very good in so many ways. Funny and kitschy and serious and sad.

Perhaps the best explanation of the Israeli-Palestinian situation I’ve seen.