trinacriabob

Saw a 1995 or 1996 Buick Regal GS coupe in metallic gold (meh) and with the rear trunk lid luggage treatment (not good). What I thought was interesting was the transition from hood ornament to the Buick medallion laid flat, Euro style. It was in near perfect condition. Amazing that this was a 23+ year old car. I sort of liked my hood ornament on that car but I don't think they work well with the GS trim. The medallion made more sense.

Sightings - 3 "cherry" last model (2009-2010?) Mercury Milans in 3 days 1 - silver - Premier - no engine badge, hence a 4 banger - next to me on the freeway - a beautiful black Belgian Sheepdog was occupying the passenger seat 2 - burgundy - Premier - no engine badge, hence a 4 banger - Florida license plates, on a major street, and in perfect condition 3 - silver or champagne (couldn't tell) - Premier - V6 engine badge - in a historic town's small downtown - an elderly Italian looking gentleman at the wheel who either didn't have his power seat set high enough or needed to put a few extra pillows under his seat

And, except for some critical roads, the roads up there are not plowed since snow in the metro Seattle area is an infrequent occurrence. Ditto for the Portland (OR) area.

Uhm, no. Not when they're playing my hometown team! I also watched them beat Atlanta, a place I lived for a couple of years while in my 20s, and I believe the Falcons had never won a Super Bowl and were last there in 1999. The Falcons appeared to have the upper hand. They then lost it in the craziest of overtime upsets. I left during the overtime and found out that everything changed while I had stepped into a store to get some groceries. That was demoralizing. Someone else's turn. Like Los Angeles's turn. The only thing I know for certain is that I will be eating pizza tomorrow night.

I saw a new Regal sport wagon alongside me today. It was either charcoal or black. It was ahead of me, beside me, and behind me as traffic flow varied, so I got to check it out. The front end is okay. The side profile is not so okay. The roofline thickens too much toward the rear and this is accentuated by the chrome molding that follows that sweep backward. The rear is rather nondescript but I do like the way the rectangular dual exhaust outlets are slotted flush with the rear bumper. I think I like the sedan better but I definitely like the rakish look of the last model better. Sayonara, January 2019.

Ah yes, Canadians and their reputation. They generally think Americans are obnoxious, which is fine with me. Actually, I don't think that a Quebecois would have been as calm as this Anglophone Canadian was. And especially if the Quebecois hailed from a more remote redneck lumber area such as Chicoutimi or Jonquiere. There's something to this. The bears may have been here and seen him before. The mother bear isn't exactly huge. Or, this guy could have been a tank, and animals who hunt and have some power can size up the situation (i.e. mountain lions). I believe the pecking order in terms of how dangerous bears are is: polar ... grizzly ... brown ... black. Polar bears are relentless. Not a theory I'd want to test. Just based on what I('ve) read.

Wow. My old car ... all pumped up. This model ran from 1988 to 1996, but the grille tells me it's an earlier model year While it wasn't my favorite car I've owned, it was the most reliable. Unbelievably reliable. My last car ... different color, though THE inimitable model year of Impala, bar none ...

Irma Bunt does not really qualify as a Bond girl. LOL. She portrayed (Telly Savalas's) Blofeld's henchwoman in this flick. She was very Germanic and sort of scary .... on various levels. We had a field day with her accent and her lines. Ah, yes. Nutella. I was raised on it. When you're a kid and you can eat just about anything without putting on a pound. Sometimes just slathered onto those round Kaiser type rolls you'd get at an Italian bakery.

I was going to wait until I ordered and consumed some chocolate cake today. In the midst of Sunday shopping, I made some time to do just that and have a cup of coffee with it. I'm hoping a slice of chocolate truffle pie counts. Delicious! One of the highlights of that movie was the Irma Bunt character. Not in a good way, but still a highlight of that movie … a most unique villain(ess) within the 007 series of films. My friends and I had a field day with her.

Random association can be a weird thing. With snow throwers or snow blowers, I reflexively think of one of the best 007 flicks in the series - "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (OHMSS) ... and this scene, courtesy of YouTube. (rated PG +, yikes) Possibly the best movie in the James Bond collection. Might have had the best musical score - the cuts without lyrics, that is. High school and college friends and I used to recite many of the great one liners. Their lack of political correctness was pretty damn funny. MOVING ON, Sunday is National Chocolate Cake Day. Plan accordingly.

Sounds like you've got a couple of kids you're proud of. That's quite an accomplishment.

What new thing did you learn today? The internet is a big compendium of positives and negatives. Here's a big positive - the DIY stuff.

How much does this sled cost? I like all the storage, especially all the hidden areas. He mentions "perfect for hoarders!" Not a great vehicle if you're right handed - you sit on the wrong side to begin with and have to shift with your left hand. You'd think this would be marketed with an automatic. Then, when he sets off down the road, I thought, "Whoa, he's driving down the wrong side of the street."

Random thought ... of the non-automotive variety: I cannot believe how many thick and inconsiderate people there are out there when it comes to recycling. I'm talking about places like IKEA, where they have separate bins for paper, plastic bottles/cans, and trash. - There are used, smeared food paper wrappers in the paper bin, as well as plastic water bottles - There is paper in the plastic bottles/cans bin - There are MANY perfectly recyclable plastic bottles in the trash bin

I'm picking out all the big opera windowed coupes! During the '70s in SoCal, I knew a black woman named Velma who bought herself a new '78 Coupe de Ville 425 V8 in the extra cost (get this) Cerise Firemist Metallic, essentially a metallic pink champagne color, with the maroon landau roof and a maroon leather interior ... and with wire wheels and the normal width whitewall tires. In its day, shiny and fresh from the showroom floor, this thing made quite a statement. The closest I've been to a long trek in a car like that was a ride from SoCal to Las Vegas in a friend's aunt's Riv coupe (RWD and based on the LeSabre chassis) with its 403 V8 silently humming across the Mojave Desert at 70 to 75 mph. Hers was tri-color light metallic blue and the seats were cloth, much nicer to get in and out of in the desert heat.

Saw some interesting newer Cadillacs in the last few days: I saw a Cadillac funeral procession car with the amber strobe light on top of its roof. It was not a hearse. It was a black CT6. It looked slick. An XT4 was next to me on the freeway. I like the way they have modified the tail lamps by taking them down along the exterior edges of the rear lift gate and then boomeranging them back toward the center. Nicely done.

The list doesn't surprise me all that much. You've got some expensive Middle Atlantic and New England states, some of the more isolated Midwestern states, and Montana (?). I thought people were moving to Montana. Movie stars and rich Californians were going up there to buy ranches. It's Wyoming they should be moving out of. Ever driven across it? Six or seven states (FL, TX, WA, etc.) have no state income tax. They are definitely picking up residents. If a state doesn't have one kind of tax, they clobber you with another one. While TX does not have a state income tax, it has high property taxes to pay for schools and services. For a $ 200,000 home in The Woodlands (nice suburb of Houston), the property tax is about $ 5,000. Then, some states don't have sales taxes (OR, MT, etc.). Oregon has one of the most steeply ascending income tax situations, essentially taking low(er) income earners toward the top bracket (about 9%) in no time flat. That's what you get when socialists run the place. In California, where the top bracket exceeds 10%, the steps up to that bracket are very well spaced apart and low(er) income earners are far from being levied that overall tax rate. Overall, Florida is a good state when you run the numbers - no personal income tax, their unique homestead exemption, reasonable property taxes, and average sales taxes, but not on groceries and pharma. They also have some sales tax holidays. They probably have the best combo. New Jersey is steep all the way around. I don't think the middle of it feels that crowded. To me, it's just the areas that cluster around NYC and Philly. New Jersey also wins the crown every year for having America's most dangerous city - Camden. Of those, Maine is really nice. It's not that populous. The southern part of the state has the more populous cities and the northern part of the state is pretty much empty. Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park are incredible. The view from Cadillac Mountain is unforgettable. It also borders Quebec and there's a huge French-Canadian factor in its history and fabric.

In the U.S., mountains and beaches mean only 5 states. If it's beaches you plan to use (to swim without a wet suit), that means only 2 - California and Hawai'i. If it's beaches you don't plan on using and can settle for just looking at, that would expand the list to Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. I definitely like California's topography and climate. And, when I was a kid, it was laid back and people with broken filters got along just fine. Now, even California suffers from too much political correctness, not to mention exorbitant housing prices, polarization in its demographics, and overpopulation (soon to approach 40 million residents). Florida's beaches are way better than California's for recreational use. (Volusia County's beaches, however, are the ones that give me a little bit of apprehension about swimming.) However, Florida's monotonous pancake flat landscape is what I've got some issues with. I've thought of moving there since the '90s at one time or another and always keep pulling the plug on the idea. I definitely like vacationing there.

It got a L-O-F at the dealer. It's the car's birthday. They also washed it for me, free of charge. This way, I can wax it. I celebrated with food yesterday ... an annual ritual, if you will. I went to the nearby location of a famed Brazilian steakhouse for their Sunday lunch buffet and where the meat/poultry/sausage/lamb keep coming. I went at about 2 p.m. I came home and laid in bed unable to do anything after that sort of a meal. The salad bar is an incredible meal in and of itself ... and that preceded the arrival of the meat/poultry/sausage/lamb.

Happy birthday. I just saw this. Don't answer, but this has me wondering who wears the pants in the household ... in most households, actually. It's always an interesting dynamic.

This site has an "original" GM history or legacy but has morphed, which is a good thing. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, of the various GM brands, Pontiac is the one that is most liked and most fondly remembered, given that it's gone and they were idiots to discontinue it. As a kid, Pontiac was definitely my favorite GM brand. Their front fascias were unique in the car business.

This morning, I got some groceries. I found a pineapple for 99 cents. I forgot how to cut these open correctly. I will have to look at YouTube. Then, there's another more upmarket grocery chain that had fresh loaves of Italian bread, bakery style, for 99 cents. I got one of those, too. I always say I'm going to eat the bread slowly over the week. I don't. Their Italian loaf is good. But their French baguette (sometimes 99 cents) is great!

This must have the 3800 V6. I had one in an early '90s Regal coupe that ran for 271,000 miles, but I was the original owner. A wrench was never taken to either the engine or transmission, unless it was to periodically change the spark plugs. I'm guessing that, at $350, you probably don't have its service records. Sounds like a deal, though. Old school codes were funny, with 2 digits. With OBD II, they are likely to have a letter followed by 4 digits. That's what my current code reader has pulled up.

I'm laughing at and loving these two specific cars. As for the Chevy, the license plate tells me it's a 1980 or 1981. That was the time that CA transitioned from a 6 digit license plate to a 7 digit license plate. This car must have been stripped down. I wouldn't be surprised if it had a 6 cylinder in it. It would have been a V6 more so than a L6 by 1980. As for the Cadillac, I can't tell the year, but I'm guessing early '80s. Anyone for a picnic on the trunk lid of this car? How about on the hood? I can't read the badging, but this could have run with a crappy V8-6-4, a Cadillac 4100 V8, or the "credit option" Buick produced 4.1 (252 c.i.) V6. We will never see anything like this again. Might as well enjoy the eye candy and the laughs while we can.

Thanks. What I'm wondering is if any engine codes that have been erased can be detected by their reader. I was looking at a great article or site and it was a lexicon of check engine codes, with each of them also ranked as serious (red), mid-range (amber), and minor (green). This one is a minor, intermittent, and seasonal one that has visited me in the past. I was impressed when, for something more involved than an oil change, one GM dealer was able to pull up my car's entire service history and had it on their clipboard along with the work order. I wonder if that's from the reader or something that the OnStar system transmits to them. I've rarely thrown engine codes in my last 3 GM cars. I know that the one that gave me any tangible drivability issues was in my last car and it was the knock sensor. For a lot of GM cars, and especially in engines they use for quite a while, it seems like they have their electronic engine control systems dialed.