An email from a fellow (lapsed) journaler suggested I take my time with the car and ask myself some weeks down the road "Do I really want this thing, this Element? Well? Do I, bubby?" (A variation of "Do ya, punk?") Who knows? Certainly not I. We'll get to the car soon enough, but maybe I should put the decision aside and get through this damned birthday I have coming. I'll get to replacing everything I own one of these days, as everything I own is old and tired and in need of replacement. I am old and tired, but not, I can assure you, ready for replacement, nor, one hopes, in need of replacement. It is a good sign to not be ready for replacement. It says so in Five Good Signs For Old Farts, a book on turning sixty, six stapled pages, only $2.95 at your local supermarket, paragraph three: "Never be ready for replacement."

Rien was more forthright: "Ugliest car I've ever seen in my life". This, oddly, gave me confidence. Rien is a good judge and ugly, really ugly, is an indication it's achieved transcendence. Urethane plastic transcendence. What could be better than urethane plastic transcendence? In America? The land of the Golden Arches?

MSJ did ask me if you could easily see inside the Element from the street. Could you see what you had in the back? Like camera bags? I hadn't thought about that. She has a cover she pulls up over any cargo she's carrying in her Jeep and I will check to see if they have something like that for the Element. Not good to buy a car and discover you can't leave your camera bags inside without broadcasting their presence to the neighborhood, when the reason you bought the car in the first place was to carry your camera bags around the neighborhood. Duh. They didn't talk about any of that in my Five Good Signs pamphlet.

Perhaps I should have extended this writer's holiday. My brain still appears to be fried.