Teleidoscope

Sat, Aug 15, 2009

Foxy Car 2

Posted at 10:11 pm MDT to Technology

Man. The Forester is a zippy car, even though it has only a 2.5 liter engine. It wants to go fast. I'm going to have to keep an eye on my speedometer until I get used to it.

And it is really nice to park after the Dakota, too -- today I pulled into the parking garage near the farmers market, parked, got out, looked at how I was parked, and got back in and pulled about a foot and a half closer to the wall.

The driver's area is very well designed. When I am in the driver's seat, with it adjusted properly for reaching the clutch, etc., I don't see any part of the hood of the car. It is all below my sight line so all I see is road. And none of the gauges and meters are hidden by the steering wheel at all.

And the height of the mount for the seatbelt shoulder strap is adjustable, so I could make it stop sawing into my neck. (The shirts I wear to work have upstanding collars, so I hadn't noticed the rubbing until today.) I may lower it one more notch, but the current improvement is already wonderful.

I've made an appointment for Tuesday to take it in to the dealership to add some options and accessories: towing package, roof rack, engine block heater (much cheaper than building a garage) and a cover for the cargo area.

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Silly Bee

Posted at 10:11 pm MDT to Weather

The weather today was very strange, and felt more like late September or early October than mid-August. It started out cool and cloudy, but the sun went in and out, with occasional bursts of cool breeze and a brief period of rain at the farmers' market (it doesn't look like I got any noticeable precipitation at my house).

THe crowd was strange, too. Lots of out-of-towners,and (therefore) a lot fewer dogs than usual. There seemed to be a lot of parent and grown child combinations... I wonder if the out of state students are beginning to arrive for the university. Our sales were as sporadic as the weather.

The most persistent visitor to out booth was a bee, or possibly a series of bees. We had a small, clear clamshell box of nasturtium flowers out on the table -- they are edible and good in salads: they taste like radishes. The box had some small air holes in it, and there was a bee that kept crawling into the box and rummaging among the flowers for a while, then coming out again for a while.

I think it was always the same bee: the breaks in its hovering around our table weren't really mong enough for shift changes unles the beehive was very close by.

Our booth is across the street (maybe 15 feet) from a florists' booth that was full of bouquets of all kinds of flowers. But the bee didn't want those flowers, even though they were out in the open and readily accessible. It wanted the flowers in that little 5x7x1 inch box.

Maybe it likes a challenge. Or really likes nasturtiums for some reason.

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