What did we find?  Well, we sucked up our pride and began calling parents.  Between the two sets of parents, we rounded up $140, the magical number that makes a trip to Indiana possible (between $42 for the petsitter coming to check on the birds and cats, and a buttload of gasoline).  This is the first trip to our so-called "home" (even though it feels nothing like that anymore) since early January, and that was a day-fer to drop off a car.

The Volvo is not good on gas, and it's especially not good when you're going 75-80 mph with windows wide open.  It's a drag, man.

Ha. Ha.

Either way, it's getting me wanting an electric car.  When the bug finally (and probably inevitably) dies, I'm skipping the hybrid and going electric.  Hopefully, I can buy solar panels to go zero-cost, zero emission.  Hopefully.  The Zap Xebra is only 12 grand.  Sure, it's a low range (40 miles) and low speed (40 mph) but I never drive more or really faster than that in the bug.  Okay, it's got a ton of limitations (specifically weight limits.... 298 pounds for four passengers?), but then there's the Myers nMG ($24,000), built in nearby Tallmadge, Ohio.  Amy hates it because it's a one-seater.

Ugh!

Hopefully, when I'm a salty old professor somewhere (in perhaps 16 months!?!?!  FUCK!) maybe we'll live close enough to campus that for most things I can simply walk.

We wouldn't've had to have the windows open had we owned a car with air conditioning for the trip over.  Yes, for us and our four (cringe) dogs, the hot car was pretty fucking miserable.  Luckily, on the way, I filled a cooler full of ice and deposited two gallons of drinking water to chill.  On the way, the dogs and us drank more than a gallon of that water to vainly try to keep cool.

It didn't work, and the heat (91 degrees plus humidity like August) nearly exhausted us.  We recovered just fine in the cold air of the air conditioner of Amy's parents' living room.  Well, that and the pizza she made us helped tremendously.  Oh, yeah, and that really long night of sleep (I haven't slept for 10.5 hours in like three years or something).

The good news in all of this, even though an electric car is likely a little ways in the future for poor old me, is that a trip back to Ohio will not be in a car with windows-rolled-down.  Dear old Uncle Kenny, Amy's uncle who, for some reason, has connections (if he was in prison, he'd be like Red in The Shawshank Redemption, and he'd be a man who could get a few things....) and all kinds of stuff stored away in some sort of private human house warehouse.  Anyway, Kenny happened to have a can of freon and a way to connect it to a Volvo.  (Who really knows how?)

Today, in our tooling around town, we had to turn down the air conditioning.  Wasn't that a nice feeling?  We visited with Amy's Aunt Linda, Amy's Grandma, and Amy's Uncle Jeff and Aunt Debbie.  Of course, our trip to Jeff/Debbie's included some time playing Guitar Hero with our cousin Luke (which may, may make us end up buying a PS2 and guitar controllers and the game... it's pretty addicting, and yes, I do know I could potentially round up instruments and do stuff like that for real, but I don't wanna, denget!)

I notice I've got a lot of aside points (those in parentheses) tonight.  Whatever.

Ugh, I soooooooooo wanted to go watch pirates last night but we ended up coming to stupid Indiana!  I know they have Pirates here but we might have gone with Kory and Kory-and-Amy-Amy to a premiere.  That would have been more fun than being in a hot car, but..... I guess we have to jump when the iron's hot to see our families every now and then.

Tomorrow evening is a trip to my parents' house in crappy old Muncie.

Why can't my parents move somewhere more interesting?