Meet Sterling...

I don't often post "silly" stuff, but after almost nine years the philosopher and I have purchased an (almost) new car. It's not quite like a member of the family, but still, we're happy.

Since he'll be teaching over an hour away this spring, it made sense to downgrade the aqua-blue '95 Dodge Dakota pickup (aka "Bismarck") to "local use only" and get another commuter car. We drove the Honda Civic and the Toyota Corrolla and the Hyundai Elantra and the Mazda 3 (zoom zoom!), but ultimately we decided to get a brother of our 2000 Focus (named "Fuzzy") and bought a 2007 Ford Focus. (I must say, though, that the professor really liked the idea of getting a Mazda. My worry was that he would say "zoom zoom" every single time we got in, for the next ten years. And I'm just not sure I could've handled that.)

So meet "Sterling", my friends! He has some features that we've never had in a car before, like automatic locks and power windows... and Cruise Control. Wow. I drove Sterling to work for the first time today, and it was quite nice. May he serve us as well as his older brother. (And another aside... for some reason all our cars have had boy names. What does that say about us?? And I'm not even going there about the fact that we name our cars at all!)