Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Outlander!



I was watching television tonight (a raresome occasion) and saw a commercial for the new Mitsubishi Outlander. It's a nice little s.u.v. that has a smallish engine and six-speed transmission. Therefore, it gets decent gas mileage. During the montage of the commercial the camera shows the dashboard, specifically the display that acts as the odometer and trip computer. This is shown because the company wants you to see the transmission switching gears rapidly up from four to five and then six. If you look above these numbers you'll notice that the gas mileage is displayed in real time. The estimated mileage for for the 4wd version is 19/25 . And what did the readout show? 11.7 mpg. Call me crazy, but I don't think that's really something you want to advertise for your midsize, car-based s.u.v.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Snowdom

It's snowing here again. Over last night we received another inch or two on top of all that snow from the holidays' blizzards. Next weekend is predicted to have another day or two of snow, as well.

Speaking of the break, I went to Indiana and Dallas during my time off from school. I flew in to Indianapolis after turning in my final paper to my l'antiquity class around the middle of December. I stayed with Sarah a few days before we made the sixteen hour journey homeward, stopping off to see Katie in Little Rock for Pei-Wei for us and backyard time for the dog. Dallas wasn't too bad, though I fell ill the day Sarah and I drove back to Bloomington. (Damn colds. It stayed with me for nigh on a week until just before I was to fly back to Denver.) We hung out with Cat, Chris, and the Twodoodles (the new name for the two Goldendoodles) as well as Sarah's departmental compatriots Stacey and Laura while I was there. Luckily I missed out on the massive amounts of snow that hit Boulder, though the ice storm did snarl my travel plans. Debbie was kind enough to use her own frequent flier miles to purchase me a ticket on American Airlines to fly to see Sarah. However, American doesn't fly directly between Denver and Indianapolis, but requires a connecting flight. All went well on my way to Indy but on the way back my flight from Indy to Chicago was delayed several hours. After waiting in line for two and a half hours I finally managed to speak with an AA worker about changing my flight over to Frontier. Thankfully the guy was competent and nice, switching me over to Frontier's final flight out of Indy straight back to Denver. The only problem was that flight was also delayed, but only by an hour. I finally made it back to DIA around 10:45 p.m., with the last bus back to Boulder running at 11:25. I got my baggage in under fifteen minutes (a minor miracle in itself) and made it to my bus in time, getting back to the house around 12:15.

So, the second week of classes starts tomorrow. I'm taking a class on archaic Latin poetry as well as a class on maritime archaeology. Both appear to be excellent classes run by knowledgeable, professional, and helpful professors. What an idea, huh? I was planning on taking a third class, in Greek, but various things conspired against me to make that impossible. It works out, though, because my loans only pay for two classes per semester anyway. I can use the remaining money to travel abroad this summer, probably back to Qarqur with Dr. Casana.

Only a couple pictures this time. These are from Tom (thanks, Tom) of the first snow storm that hit while I was gone. Yes, that is my car underneath.