I'm doing research for car shopping right now. I think I have it narrowed down to either (a) Honda Civic (where I'm leaning towards at this point); (b) Toyota Corolla (yes, it's a cliche since it's so popular, but there's gotta be a reason it's popular, yes?); and (c) Scion tC (expensive, but it does have some excellent reviews). I'm hoping to keep the total cost under $19K (preferably closer to $15K, but I'm realistic that I want more damn space and performance than my current Sunfire provides, so I'm willing to pay a bit more).

I got some prices from online research, and just submitted my info to LendingTree, since I want to see what kind of offer I can get independent of the dealer. There is a deadline here, since I have to buy the car this weekend for my drive out East to my mom's for Thanksgiving (said Sunfire will never make it with its 106,000 miles).

I remember your initial linkage

At least someone was paying attention.

I tend to skip any reference to Gallo, he's such a fucking jerk.

Did anyone post this today? It looks like Tom realizes his PR machine needs some fine tuning.

Oh. I read this: "Lee Anne DeVette apparently out after tumultuous, couch-jumping year" and thought, well, sure, you're not going to do great work if you don't even have your own place to stay! I did not think, "Oprah interview."

It looks like Tom realizes his PR machine needs some fine tuning.

That's more credit than I'd give him. But who knows? Can't be worse for his rep.

Liese, I miss them. The things they call mountains out here are total hills. The Organs will always be my favorite mountains (woke up to them everyday, oriented myself by them, climbed all over them,) but waking up at my aunt & uncle's and getting blasted by the Ivy peaks? Whoa. The bedroom is a loft room on the second floor with floor to ceiling windows above the trees, facing the peaks. A wee bit overwhelming. Buena Vista got added to my run-away-and-be-a-waitress-in-a-dive locations.

My parents were talking about LA the other day. Basically, all they really remember are the mountains*. Being in them, rather. A lot of my parents' courting took place on hiking trips. My dad was a climber, and even though my mom hated heights, she was smitten enough to go on scary-for-her hiking trips in the San Gabriels. There's a picture of her looking mussed and way way embarrassing WAY too smug and happy on some peak. When we were going through pictures, I saw that one and just told her "I don't want to know" and she got a bad case of the giggles. Also, she's such a BABY in it! She was 22ish.

* The other thing mom recalled was that she knew basically two routes in LA from where she lived. One to what was then LA City College (?the name may be off, but I think it is UCLA now) and the prison she volunteered at and the other to Caltech. I was reading various freeways to her, and she was all NOPE. She really hated driving there. Good thing her sisters found her my dad.

Kathy, we loved our Civics. We've had three of them.

I'm actually in Civic withdrawl now that I am Civicless. The Saturn, while functional, lacks the personality and comfort of a Civic, to say nothing of the turning radius.

sarameg!! I have been posting not around you in so long!

Kathy, while having owned neither, I don't think you can go wrong either way. My parents have one of those wee civic hatchbacks and their only complaint is that they are getting too arthritic to lower themselves so much (well, and they have to manually turn off the turn signal. But given my dad's enthusiastic whacking of the signal when he deigns to use it...I think that's a user issue.) My brother beat the hell out of a more recent civic sedan and until he sold it, it was gold. And he sold it for more than he bought it. But that may have been the souping up. My lawyer friend bought a corolla a couple years ago and loves it to pieces, and has had no problems with it.

I'm a big Honda fan. Our Accord has been running well for us for 8 years and has 153K miles on it. Can't beat that with a big stick.

That's more credit than I'd give him. But who knows? Can't be worse for his rep.

Ohhhh...what if if this is Katie's doing? She might be influencing him instead of the other way around. /delusional