My holiday weekend started with a nice little gift – a few of those White Pepper & Spice candles courtesy of Joe (a really cool thing to do for essentially a complete stranger). With a little supply built up, I spent the weekend burning one down. I dunno what it is, but I find the scent of those candles entirely relaxing.

We decided to play ‘pick-up’ around the house on Saturday. Everyone just started going nuts – spring cleaning style and the place looked great by late afternoon. Even the kids chipped in. In the evening the kids had a friend stay over which meant pizzas and a giant chocolate chip cookie (like those big cookie ‘cakes’ you can get) that we made ourselves.

Sunday found us at The Greene with a quick stop at Finish Line to exchange a pair of shoes for little man that fit just two months ago when he picked them out for school. The kid’s growing like a weed. The best part was when three totally fly black dudes who were clearly just hanging out and blowing time while their ladies were off shopping asked if they had any Vick jerseys. I swear the entire store busted up laughing. One of those great moments that you had to be there for. It’s times like that that I miss being young and fun like that. The 30-something dude with his wife and kids exchanging a pair of shoes asking the same question just wouldn’t have worked.

We left there and headed back towards home and made a quick stop at Best Buy. I have a bunch of reward certificates and gift cards from buying stuff (like the new TV) and credit card rewards. Mostly wanted to take a peek at the small LCD TV’s. The TV my daughter has in her room is the very first TV my wife and I ever bought together and it’s showing it’s age. She’s due for a new one and with a couple of hundred dollars worth of rewards, we could probably snag a nice little TV she could hang on the wall. So we casually looked around (we’re thinking X-mas gift for the TV) and found that we could end up with a decent on for less than $75 out-of-pocket. Guess what she’s probably getting for Christmas?

We ended up letting the kids grab a Wii game too. Everyone settled on Carnival Games. Another set of mini games with a carnival theme. Lame by gamer standards, but it’s crap like this that’s keeping the Wii in high demand. This is exactly the kind of game that requires no commitment, is a fun time waster and anyone can get right into and have a little fun with. In all honesty, it gets old, fast. I figure you can get 10 hours or so out of it before it gets so repetitive that you feel the urge to murder, but the kids have really enjoyed it and my wife plays too. That’s what it’s all about.

From there we stopped by an open house. We’ve been hitting those lately trying to get ideas of the houses, communities, prices and all of that. We’re still not sure what our long-term intentions are in the area, but it looks more and more as if it might make sense to settle here with each passing day. No reason not to have the knowledge – just in case. We really like the subdivision/community the house was in. We’ve seen several there, but the prices are usually just out of our range. This one seemed like a really good deal for the price (especially compared to the area), but we’re not committing to anything yet. Just being nosy/gathering info.

Stopped back home and blew and hour or two playing the new Wii game. Then headed back out around five.

Something else we’ve been really mulling over (that I’ve intentionally left off of this little blog o’ mine) is a new vehicle. We finally decided the time has come. Here’s a fact that most people can’t believe when they find out – we’ve functioned as a one-vehicle family since we were married. Tell people that in this day and age and they look at you like you’re fucking batty. We’ve just always been able to do it with very little hassle.

However, time change. The kids are both in school now and have more and more commitments and obligations. The wife is doing the ‘moving up the corporate ladder’ thing and has more obligations and commitments. Even I (the perennial stoner/slacker who doesn’t hold a ‘real’ job) find myself growing up and needing to be places more than I used to. It’s time to add a second vehicle to the mix.

The only problem is that the door is wide open. We can get whatever the hell we want (within our price range, of course) – but that still leaves an overwhelming number of choices. Most people will try to put you (and by ‘you’, I mean a family like ours) in an SUV or crossover of some kind. That’s a possibility, I suppose – if you’re reading this one, J-Pizzie, I apologize in advance :)

The thing is, we really don’t necessarily need that. We’re driving an Altima. The car meets our needs in every way. It holds all of us and everything we need to drag around – even on the big park trips. We’ve done trips as long as two weeks in that thing and been just fine. The trunk is huge and the interior spacious. It’s a comfy travel car that’s done every big trip we’ve taken since the Canada trip in 2004.

However, I have to admit that an SUV/XUV is not out of the question. But if we do score one, I’d prefer something…ummm…for lack of a better term…luxurious. That’s still not the right word though. If I’m driving an SUV, I want it to kick some ass. Loaded. Navigation, DVD entertainment systems, big stereo, sunroof, leather. The whole she-bang. And quite frankly, that can get costly.

Costly for something I’m not sure I even need isn’t good.

But with that said, I don’t want just another middle of the road car. As I’ve established we love the Altima. But I don’t need two of them sitting in the garage. The point is we have middle-of-the-road covered.

Maybe something smaller. (we have the trip/travel thing covered, right?) But again, by smaller, I don’t mean more economical, I mean sportier. More fun. Something with balls.

At any rate, we’re looking to buy a new vehicle soon and have no idea what we want. So we took advantage of it being a Sunday evening and a holiday weekend, to stop by dealerships knowing they’d be closed and we could just mull around the lot without the hassle of dealing with anyone and wasting everybody’s time as we’re still just at the beginning of the ‘just looking’ phase. Researching online is a great head-start, but nothing beats seeing the cars in person.

In the end, I think we walked away more confused than when we started. Too many choices can be a bad thing.

On Monday we took care of some errands during the day. We considered the car thing some more. We generally blew the day with little things. Had some stuff to deal with late in the evening, but nothing major. Ended up crapping out on this week’s podcast. A mostly nothing day.

On a positive note, I did discover that AmericanLife occasionally runs episodes of WKRP, so that was cool. I never even knew we had that channel or what it was, but it seems like they run some cooler old stuff. I’ll have to keep an eye on them. I eneded up watching WKRP and an episode of Bob Newhart. (the old Bob Newhart show, not the newer Newhart – although I did notice they also run Newhart…so that’s cool)