Category: What the…?

Just four days short of six months of smart car driving, and the odometer turns over to 5,000 miles when I’m in an extremely slow construction zone backup on Washington Street in downtown Portland.

I’ve found the clement early fall weather useful, because the crutches just don’t fit well into the smart when there’s a passenger, but you can stick them out the cabrio top in back if temperature and precipitation are favorable. A passenger can fit in front with them if the top’s down, but they tend to be eating the rubber pads.

One year ago today: The parrot tree in Hyde Park. They’re there, believe me.

One year ago today: Barbara waiting for that perfect photo in the London Eye above Parliament.

One year ago today: Mom across from the Royal Albert Hall, standing in Hyde Park, London.

The Fu Jin reopened Friday after their annual vacation.

A cheerful message is on its way to you.

Use your abilities at this time to stay focused on your goal. You will succeed.

My brother told me my niece’s first steps were taken on Plymouth Rock last week, where at least some of our family is reputed to have have arrived nearly 400 years ago.

Meanwhile, sometime this winter I’m going to have to relearn a few moves myself, after fracturing my knee (yes, on the same leg I broke the ankle of six years ago) last week.

I used to use this image for the background of my business cards:

Driving up north the other day, I saw a familiar squat shape pulling onto I5 between Tacoma and Seattle, and as we pulled up next to it, it was indeed an AMC Pacer, which was the first car I ever had (and which had been my father’s car for several years). Regrettably, a lack of money for regular maintenance didn’t do my Pacer any favors, and I didn’t have it (running) for many years. We went a couple years without a vehicle of our own, then bought a relative’s Volkswagen Rabbit — which broke down one too many times and ended up being replaced with a new Ford Escort hatchback. The Escort was dependable and sturdy, managing to take out an SUV and a van in the only accident I’ve ever been involved in. In a tragic mistake, we replaced it with a used Escort hatchback that we were able to buy outright with the insurance money. The transmission on that baby stripped out on us on a dark September Friday evening near Mary’s Peak. For the past decade, we’ve been driving its successor, a trusty (new) Escort wagon.

My sixth car is the smart. And you can see its dash reflected in the window of the photo, bringing the car line full circle. I still have a soft spot in my heart for the Pacer, though.

Who says innovation is dead in the Detroit auto industry?

Oh wait, that would be me.

On the top is the Jeep Renegade, a concept car introduced this week at the Detroit Auto Show.

Below that is the smart crossblade, which was produced in a limited edition run of 2,000 beginning back in 2001. One was offered for sale (at $40,000) on eBay last month, but apparently you couldn’t drive it anywhere. Legally.

A rental house around the corner burned down the other day. Two alarms, a big blaze at 12:30 in the morning, embers flying down the block. There but for the love of God and a candle on the wooden deck go I, you think.

One of the guys in the house was apparently a bit of a musician; as I was walking by on my way to the store yesterday night, I saw the back of what looked like a large guitar propped up against the stairs then, on the return trip I saw something I’d missed from the direction I was walking: one cello, heavily singed.

Back in grade school — in those long-ago days of music enrichment programs — I was assigned to play the viola. But my little birth defect made holding and fingering a viola exceedingly difficult, so they switched me to cello. All I can say is, seeing the burned cello made me sad, even though lugging a cello a mile and a half home after school was a lot more work than carring the viola.