Saturday, April 01, 2006

Psst...are they gone?

My parents are going to touch down in Iowa in about an hour, so it is now officially safe to say...

...we bought a car!!! Some of you may have guessed a house...do you really think we'd buy a house before talking to my parents? The car however...I think it's a good surprise. And, when they get here from the airport, I'll tell them we won it in a sweepstakes or something. We'll see how long it takes them to remember it's April 1st.

It is a 2005 Kia Spectra. We traded in Dave's '91 red Escort. It's been good to us over the years, but had recently been used as target practice for driver's ed. students. It was sad for both of us when we exchanged cars and took off our Alberta plate. Dave said he felt like he was abandoning an old friend. Here's a picture of him getting out of the Escort for the last time.


Thank you, red Escort. We will always remember you!

Here is a blurry picture of Dave and I when we picked up our new-to-us Kia on Thursday afternoon.


We'll take a better picture of it tomorrow morning.

Do you want to hear something totally aggravating and ironic? OK. I dropped Dave off at Simpson at about 3pm, went home to change, and headed over to Norwalk (another town, 20 minutes NW of here) to help our friends Chad and Lezli move into their new house. Of course, I had to bring the new car. It was just too exciting. Then the worst spring storm to date hit. Not only was I pretty much useless in helping with the move (we had to sit it out inside), but when I really did need to leave, I ran to the car split seconds before it starting hailing. Walnut-sized hail hurled itself at my new car!!!!! There was no shelter anywhere close to protect it. The hail stopped after a couple of minutes, but the damage had been done. Had it happened an hour or two before picking up the car, we might even have been able to negotiate a lower price. GRRRRRRRRRRR... Very minor dimples, but they're there all the same. I couldn't believe it. I was half expecting a tornado to come along and pick it up as well. (No tornadoes near us--you may have heard of a few in Iowa on Thursday night--from the same storm.)

Well, we have one more picture. Here is our new baby next to our old baby in our driveway (we have no garage, so if more hail comes...aaahhhh!). You can tell it was raining when this was taken.


I think the blue Escort looks sad. She's either thinking, "Where's my boyfriend? and who's this in his place?" or, "Don't tell me I'm next." The Kia looks like it's smiling.

Kia took us to Pella this morning where I had a rehearsal. I still have no idea what group this is I'm playing for tomorrow. There's a choir, and the concert is at Central College, but the group looks really mixed (ages), like a community choir. However, there is also a percussion ensemble in this concert. I guess I'll find out when I see a program tomorrow. I did have an anxiety dream though. I dreamed that I was playing principal with CRSO, and I got to Cedar Rapids and realized my oboe and reeds were still at home. Somehow this was ok, and I still made the rehearsal on time. Whenever I dream of playing my oboe, I never actually play it. Either I have no reed and in its place there's a pencil I have to try blowing into, or there's a terrible reed that doesn't work. Either way, I always have to sing my part, because no sound comes out of the instrument. So that was my dream last night. It was the bad reed dream, reflective of my current situation. I don't think I'll have the same dream tonight, as the group was pretty bad, and I needn't have been anxious.

By the way, for those of you who thought we'd bought a house, that may be another blog sooner than you think! We're looking at a house for the third time on Monday.

2 comments:

Karmen said...

Yay!! I knew it was a car!! :) Good stuff!

~P~ said...

I can not believe dave still had that car....I remember that car. are you guys the type of people that have boxes you keep moving with yet you have never opened them since you left calgary, and if you did they would be misc. sheet music from high school...? awsome.