Home for the holidays. I saw my parents on Christmas day. We went to Mass at St. Mary's Cathedral, something that has become something of a short-term tradition. I visited them in Bastrop later in the week. Samantha and I are traveling to Boulder, CO to visit her friends there after the new year and with the terrible weather around Denver over the past week, my parents were nervously trying to do whatever they could think of to ensure our safety on our road trip. After a recent blow-out on their way home from visiting my sister in Mississippi, my parents have been very concerned about my car's lack of a spare tire, so my Dad took me to the local salvage yard to track down a tire that would suffice as a spare for me.I'm not much of a car person. I wish I had a bit more know-how when it comes to automobiles but I don't. I've never had the occaision to visit a salvage yard. When we arrived I was non-plussed: as you might imagine there were piles of junked cars missing panels and wheels and doors and bumpers. I didn't even bother getting out of Dad's truck while he trekked up to the office -a haggard mobile home that rested unsteadily on stilts made from stacks of tire rims. After a little while a tiny 80's model Honda hatchback came whizzing from behind the trailer office and the scruffy driver deposited a totally decent tire at our feet.
Honestly I'm sort of tired of my car. It drives fairly well and its reasonably dependable. I'm sure it will make the trip from Denton to Austin hundreds of more times before it croaks but it is so plain and boring - a white GM 4-door sedan. I'd really like to replace it with a hybrid or a nice later-model Volvo. I'm not going to but I'd like to. While at the junk yard though I entertained this fantasy which involves seriously cleaning up all the horrible things I've done to my car in preparation for trading it in or selling it. I had in mind finding a trunk lining to replace the one horribly mangled by ill-conceived attempt to transport a car battery for recycling. I mention this to my Father and the Honda driver and we all pile into the tiny car with the back passenger door that opens on every sharp right turn and head off into the hidden depths of the salvage yard that lay behind the trailer and workshop and tin shantys that composed the yard's complex.
It was bewildering. There were rows and rows of mangled heaps of cars grouped by make. It was a decaying bizzarro car lot straight out of a J.G. Ballard novel. My new car fantasy excitement quickly dissapated leaving only curious dread as we sped by the crumpled hulks. It struck me that more than likely each one of the wrecks we were looking at had been party to a pretty terrible car crash - so many cars that were also coffins.
I cannot believe that it has been sevenish months since I last posted in this blog. Plenty of blog-worthy stuff happened over the course of the last sevenish months the least of which has my semi-recent move to from Austin to Denton with Samantha. I am completely baffled by my growing resistance to writing. Samantha is participlating in the