So yesterday as Becca and I were driving back to Clear Lake, we saw five large tour buses go by, one after another, in the opposite direction, heading into town. This morning, reading the local news, I realized that they weren’t just any old tour buses–inside were the New England Patriots, freshly arrived for the Super Bowl. Cool. Though it would have been cooler if they were the Panthers (who came in to Intercontinental on the other side of the city). Go Panthers!!
Anyway. Becca and I were up in town for the infamous President’s Scholarship interviews. (For those non-Georgia Tech people reading, it’s a scholarship Becca and I had while there, and now we get to join the rest of the Houston GT Alumni Club in interviewing people for it, mwa ha ha!) We had nine high school seniors to interview, and the afternoon was a lot of fun, if a little tiring–I’m not even the one being interviewed, and the whole process still wore me out. I interviewed two students, one who would be a good PS and one who wouldn’t, and talked to a few more. It was fun, but also sort of a strange experience. I alternated between feeling close to and then miles away from being a high school senior. There are some things they go through that I feel like I can still identify with…and then I remember how much I have changed in the eight years since I was in their position, and realize that they still have so much to learn and experience.
On Saturday, Becca and I test drove cars. The Jeep dealership, which we are convinced is smoking too much crack, was closed again, so Becca still hasn’t test-driven the Wrangler. But we both tried out the Toyota Rav4, and then she came along while I test drove the Mazda Tribute and Ford Escape. The Rav4 was fun, but not very zippy (if only it came with a V6!), and small. Too bad, because I like the way it looks. Neither the Ford or the Mazda salesman gave me a satisfactory answer about the differences between the Tribute and Escape, and so I had to research it for myself. From what I can tell, they have the same frame and engine and transmission, and the interiors are practically identical, but the Tribute has a sportier suspension. The differences are in increments, not leaps and bounds.
If I were going to buy a new car tomorrow, it’d come down to the Escape or Xterra. I’d buy the Escape over the Tribute simply because I liked the Ford dealership better. But I am really tempted to go for the Xterra because I like and trust Nissan so much. It was amazing to me to see how little the salesmen know about their own product; I knew more about the Rav4, and about the differences between the Escape and Tribute, than any of the salesmen did, and I only spent a day on the internet doing the research. You’d think that if they were trying to sell them, they would have done enough studying to know the answers to basic questions like “what’s the Rav4’s towing capacity?” But no. I was amazed at their lack of knowledge. Anyway. We’ll see. There are still more cars to test drive, and I’m not buying for at least another two months anyway. But it’s quite fun to test them out. 🙂
It was also a weekend of movies. On Friday night I rented “All I Want” after seeing it on the shelf at Blockbuster and wondering whether it was any good. I’d never heard of it before, but it stars Elijah Wood (filmed post-LOTR), Mandy Moore, and Franka Potente, the girl from “Run Lola Run” that I like a lot. It turned out to be a sort of coming-of-age story. Pretty good. I enjoyed it. Saturday afternoon, Becca and I went to see “Win a Date with Tad Hamilton” and thoroughly enjoyed the cheesiness of it, and commiserated over our mutual jealousy toward Kate Bosworth. Why? Well, if you know who she’s dating, you’ll understand. Saturday night, I watched my second Blockbuster rental, “SWAT.” I missed it in the theater. I thought it was entertaining enough, but nothing special. There was surprisingly little at Blockbuster that interested me. I need to get out to the theater again though, as there are still a bunch of current movies on my list.
I got back from my weekly Monday lunch spanish class a little while ago, and it is so nice outside today. The weather in Houston this winter has been a roller coaster ride–lovely days like today followed by torrential rain, or cold, or a solid week of nothing but gray. A rainless cold front is supposed to come through this afternoon, and by tomorrow morning the lovely sunshine will have abated, and the current 70 degree temperature will have fallen to 35 degrees. Sigh.
