Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

I have been very much under the weather all day. I didn’t get much sleep due to coughing. So I slept between meetings at work.

I needed a bit of fresh air and the mountains and clouds reminded me of why life is good.

When I was a kid I loved decorating the outside of the two story colonial my father built. When the landscaping was put in I was very excited to put up Christmas lights. During the holidays my dad would often share that I said to my mom, “the next time you go to town please pick up a couple more strands of lights”.

The Christmas lights in question were sold in sets of 35 and cost $1.99 per set at The Rite Aid. These lights used the standard sockets of the time and the light bulb sat inside the reflector, and the reflector plugged into the socket. I was delighted when I discovered a reflector from a set purchased at Ames, which was shaped like a crown, would fit into the same set as the set purchased at Rite Aid, which had reflectors shaped like a flower.

With LED lighting all the rage we have LED Christmas lights all over the house. They look nice but in my opinion they lack a certain warmth when it comes to the festive colors. There’s just something so enchanting to the traditional colors and the incandescent glow of these old sets of Christmas lights.

The 35 count light sets often had “two way flashing”, which was basically two circuits of lights. Each could be controlled by a red tipped, white “flasher” bulb. With one flasher, every other light in the strand would blink while the opposing light would remain steady. With two flashers in the set, the two circuits flashed to their own rhythm. If you put three flashers in the set, which the circuits were obviously not designed for, the circuit with two flasher bulbs would flash rapidly until one of the flasher bulbs burned out. I did that only once or twice.

During the Christmas season I was often found lying under the tree, usually snuggled up with one of the several cats we had at any given time, staring up into the Christmas tree watching the lights blink or twinkle.

Nothing screams “the season of good will” like receiving 25-30 marketing emails an hour proclaiming the importance of Cyber Monday. You do not love your loved ones until you’ve purchased them some sort of plastic trinket (valued at $75 today only!), wrapped it in paper, and watched them open it on Christmas Day to say, “what the hell is it?”.

Earl and I started outside decorating for the holiday season. I have to admit, it put me in a great mood and helped me appreciate the impending holidays.

We’ve been talking about buying a new car for a couple of weeks. On Friday we decided we’d go look at cars, just look mind you, on Saturday. After considering several crossover SUVs we had narrowed our choices down to two: the 2024 VW Tiguan and the 2023 Nissan Rogue. The closest VW and Nissan dealers are not far from our home.

We had been talking about purchasing an electric vehicle. However, with the number of road trips that we do on a fairly regular basis, and the lack of electric charging station infrastructure in the desert southwest, we decided we weren’t ready to make the leap to an EV. We did consider the MPG on the models we were looking at. Our 2016 Jeep Cherokee averages around 25 MPH on the highway and we definitely wanted something better than that.

Our first stop was the Volkswagen dealership. A friendly chap came out and showed us what they had in stock for both the 2023 and 2024 Tiguans. I was a bit disappointed when I saw the cars in person. They didn’t quite hit home for what I was looking for; the seats were smaller than anticipated, the infotainment screen seemed small, and it just didn’t feel right. Earl didn’t care for the model at all. We made nice talk and departed the lot.

Our next stop was the Nissan dealer. They had a decent selection of the Rogues in various trim levels. We were aiming for the middle of the road with the SV line. The young man showing us the vehicles was fairly low pressure, to the extent that he never offered to unlock a car for us to sit in. We talked numbers a bit and while he was “talking to the boss”, a sales manager came over and asked what number we were looking for. He said his job was to convince us to sign today. We gave him a number, he said “why not” and then disappeared. He never came back. The original man gave us their best number. We said we’d think about it.

One of the reasons we were focusing on the 2023 Nissan Rogue was because we had recently rented one when the Jeep Cherokee was up in Las Vegas with Jamie. We really liked the way the rental drove, the interior, the exterior, and the comfort level we experienced in this car.

I suggested we drive over to the Tucson Auto Mall on the other side of town. There’s a dealership for just about every brand over there, including Nissan. Earl had chatted with a salesperson there online the day before, and we asked for her when we arrived.

This was another low pressure experience. We went through the inventory and sat in a few of the cars. We were settled on one of two colors: “Scarlet Ember Timbercoat” or “Gun Metallic”. Earl’s request was no black, no white, or no silver, as these colors are far old people and we’ve been driving a black 2016 Jeep Cherokee for seven years and before that we had two black Jeep Wranglers (2004 and 2011) and a black Acura RSX (2005). We were leaning toward the Scarlet model, which was out on a test drive with another customer.

They didn’t buy it.

After some financial discussions with our sales person and other nice talk, we decided to buy the car on a day we were out to only look for cars.

One of our tactics for the day was we didn’t bring a downpayment, in fact, we wouldn’t have access to the funds until Monday. The sales person told us if we could a fraction of the downpayment down we could drive the car off the lot that day and then bring the rest of the downpayment within the next 10 days. I suggested putting the rest of the downpayment on the credit card so we could get the airline miles for a trip next year and we were surprised when that strategy was approved by our credit card company. The money comes out of the back on Monday and we will pay off the credit card immediately.

I am married to a very smart man.

So, with Earl following along in our 2016 Jeep Cherokee, I drove our brand new 2023 Nissan Rogue SV home. We’ve decided to keep the Cherokee for as long as practical, because we are always needing a third car for the five of us. Plus, because of the mileage, even though the car is in great shape cosmetically, it’s needing some care here and there and the trade in value isn’t what we could get for it on the street. This Cherokee was purchased in Upstate New York, and has had plates from New York, Illinois, and now Arizona on it. It’s been across the country several times. It deserves to stay with us for as long as practical.

So we are now part of the Nissan family. The technology in this vehicle is amazing, with adaptive cruise control, assisted lane management, and a bunch of other sonar and radar features that I’m just starting to discover.

This is our holiday present to us. I’m looking forward to the new adventures.

I was out for an after supper walk last night, flashlight/weather radio combo in hand, light on low and the NOAA Weather Radio station on Mt. Lemmon gently telling me about the current conditions and the upcoming weather. It’s the old school way of assessing the weather but I still enjoy it very much.

Something caught my eye in the night sky. I looked up and saw my first “Starlink Satellite Train” moving across the sky. I immediately knew what I was seeing and while these trains do pollute our sky bit, especially for those of us into astronomy, I have to admit watching the line glide across the sky so effortlessly was pretty nifty.

I tried to take a photo with my iPhone 13 Pro; the result is what you see above.

Even though it’s the weekend, I was up early at my usual time this morning. I think this comes along with getting older. I’m just up at sunrise these days and I actually feel good.

I’ve been fighting a little bit of the sniffles since last weekend’s flight home. It’s nothing dramatic; just a light cold. Other than an occasional cough or sneeze I’m feeling pretty decent.

I went for my morning walk and I was delighted with the colors in the sky. I turned the corner and started heading west, where it was apparent a storm system is moving into the area. But Mother Nature treated us to a rainbow first.

I got in the house just as it started raining. Weather models say it should clear up by this afternoon.