New Name

Back in February, I posted about the newest "member" of our family, my new red Toyota Matrix. At the time, she was Molly. She has a new name, "Minnie." (Which I don't especially care for -- makes me think of Minnie Mouse. I liked Mimi, but the hubster, loyal son of Das Vaterland that he is, says it's "too French." Sigh.)

Anyway, what occasioned the name change was meeting an actual person named Molly at the Summer School. Charity forbids my saying very much about this, umm, interesting person, except to note that she was a third-year student this year, and is the only person I have ever seen conduct a choir with a hula motion. Most of us conduct with the "opposable thumbs" approach, i.e., we move our arms in opposite directions from each other. Molly conducted by moving her arms in the same direction at once. She did get her certificate -- I'm not sure if it was because she didn't fall apart altogether during the final exam, or because they would do anything to make sure she didn't come back.

She had other idiosyncrasies. Let's just leave it at that. But I knew that if I ever referred to "Molly" again, it wouldn't be my little red car I'd be thinking of. Hence, the name change.

And, just before we left for Jordanville, we got another Toyota Matrix. This one's pure white, and its name is "Snoopy." It started out life as "E. B." (the hubster being an admirer of E. B. White), but "Snoopy" fits it much better. Its purchase was occasioned by a broken tie rod, followed by the discovery that all the other tie rods on the car were also in shaky condition, and fixing one of these puppies, in this neck of the woods, costs upwards of $400. Plus, the car was a 1994 Escort -- hard to find parts for it, at this point. Plus, the floor was rusting out altogether, and in NH, your car doesn't pass the state inspection if the floor is rusted. (Doesn't matter if the headlights are out of balance, or even if the tie rods are about to fall apart -- as I learned one September, after a state inspection the previous month -- but that floor had better be good and solid. Go figure.)

Fortunately, we paid cash for the first car, so we only have one car payment to handle. But the hubster was considering retirement, before this latest discovery. Now - well, who knows?