One of the reasons I really enjoy the ferry commute.

The view before me, of Bainbridge Island and the peninsula.

Plus, they serve beer and wine on the boat.

I’m not a car junkie guy. My folks (correctly, in my estimation) made sure I knew how to change oil, fill fluids, change a tire, etc., but I don’t get any kick out of working on them. My car choices to date have been pretty pedestrian (Chevy Beretta, Dodge Intrepid, Ford Taurus, etc.)

I knew the Taurus was going to graduate to be the boys’ car, and I knew I wanted something that got good gas mileage. The Ford F-150 Crew Cab we bought a couple of years ago and rarely used didn’t fit the bill, and ended up being the trade in bait. We would need the Toyota Mini Van for all of us to be in and for road trip, but I didn’t want to commute in it.

At some point, and I don’t know really why, I became intrigued by MINIs. Not because of The Italian Job either…I didn’t see it until after I’d ordered this car. Maybe Austin Powers. So, as noted in the earlier article, I drove MINIs a couple of times, and ordered one a couple of days after Christmas. (Heavy Irony Note: We ordered some furniture from a well-known brand name furniture store in November. It still isn’t here. Our car, built in Oxford, England, came in less than two months. Sheesh.)

Since I ordered Maggie, I was able to enter the order number onto MINI’s website and follow her progress as she was being built. Very cool. I also heard periodically from the dealership, Northwest Mini in Tacoma about the car’s progress.

Now, a word about the dealership and our contact (:::ahem::: “Motoring Advisor”, I’ll have you know, thank you very much) there, Jay Hammon. Best. Car. Buying. Experience. Ever. And honestly, I’ve had some good ones, because most of the time on the bad ones, I walk out. Jay was super nice and super patient and super accommodating. They made the whole thing easy. No BS, no silly dickering, no “what will it take to get you into this car today”. It was like “Hey, we have a pretty cool product. Drive one, if you like it, we’ll hook you up with the one you want, the way you want it. Have a Coke, too.” They gave us more than book for the truck. We never even dickered a bit there. It was a nice truck, and they played fair. How cool is that?

They made the whole buying and financing thing easy. They sent me the forms in advance, I filled them out, and we had our deal in about 15 minutes from when I handed them to Jay. Diane Steeves, the finance manager, was so nice I was stunned. Usually at that stage they are trying to up sell you to death, and act like you’re a moron if you don’t buy every little warranty. They had some deals, they were decent, and we said we’d think about it. Finis. Not a problem, no pressure, lots of laughing, and we were treated like sensical adults, for gosh sakes. Sign the papers, here’s your keys. Nice.

Jay spent a good deal of time showing us how to use the car, especially to convertible top and radio, stuff I could have figured out eventually from the manuals, but this was much easier. Easy to read manuals, though. Oh, and here’s a nice new small road atlas. Here’s a book showing all of our dealerships, where your warranty is good. We have to work on the car more than 3 hours, we give you car to use. You come in for an oil change, we’ll drive you to the mall. We pay for the oil change for 3 years too. And brakes. And wiper blades.

Like I said. Best. Ever.

Now about the car. MINIs are special. They’re quirky. They’re cute. They’re designed by Germans (BMW, specifically) with British style. The car is well thought out. The controls are in reach and make sense. The top works great, and you can retract it with the key fob. It will retract partway to be a moon roof.

The front is comfortable for two. The back seat is a joke, but you know what, Jeri and I went to Costco today in the MINI, and loaded it all up ok. I could even see out the back.

I got a manual, and it works fine. I like manual transmissions on small cars, it adds an extra dimension of fun. This one shifts easy and has plenty of zip for a small four cylinder. It’s easy to turn and park because of the size. I’ve driven it 300 miles…there’s still a little less than 1/2 a tank left.

The radio is a Harmon Kardon, and is very nice. I added an Ipod connector, and while it isn’t as functional as I’d hoped, it is nice and it charges the Ipod as well.

Overall, it is a kick to drive and I look forward to driving her every day. So, I’m officially hooked to a car. If you’re thinking about an economy car, MINIs are well worth a look.

At some point in the last couple of years, I sort of had a thing about Mini Coopers. In spite of my big size, and the (obvious) smallness of the make, I wondered what they’d be like to drive. We even stopped by the Mini dealer here in the Seattle area, and I took a quick spin in one. Fun. Very fun, and very cool. “Someday,” I thought. I went to miniusa.com and built one, for fun too.

Then of course, quite recently, I blogged about how silly commercials showing folks getting cars for Christmas are. Get real, I said.

So then Jeri surprised me with a Mini. Well, a model Mini, a keychain for a Mini, and an appointment with the dealer to order it.

So the picture above what it’ll look like; yes, its a convertible. They are a kick in the pants to drive (I’m getting a manual 5-speed), very low to the ground but sturdy. Nice and roomy in the front, but the back “seat” is a joke, and pretty much an admitted one. they get great reviews, hold their value well, and get super good gas mileage…not like a hybrid, but very good. It has a nice package of options, including a very nice stereo system my Ipod will hook to.

Anyway, I’m psyched, and I’ve been showing off the pics and the model at the office enough that I’m sure everyone hates me now.

Here’s another pic of one that’s pretty close to the one I’ll be getting that was at the dealership. Mine gets here in March.

So here’s to my wonderful wife for having us do something fun and getting the Mini for me. This one might also get something I haven’t done to a car…give it a name. Any suggestions?

I was heading over to the airport, but almost everyone else was on their way to the Seahawks game. (Bryan and his brother-in-law were in the walk-on area of the same boat.)

It was a truly glorious Indian summer day – golden orange leaves, slight sea breeze riffling the water and 75 degrees in the sun.

In front of me was a lively pickup football game. A couple lanes to my left was a 10 year old girls soccer team, bopping and giggling to hip hop music on one of their parents’ car stereos. Off to the right, at the newsstands, was a group of young parents and their café lattes & baby strollers, animatedly catching up on the news. All the local dogs and their owners spilled out of cars for one last stroll along the edge of the parking lot.

It’s a very different feeling than the 6:20am commuter ferry, where folks sleep behind the wheel, or blearily read their paper, slurping coffee like a lifeline. I enjoyed it.

We have a honking big, beautiful red pickup truck – a Ford F150 Crew Cab off road 4×4. We got it so we’d have something that we could use to tow our boat (and boat trailer) with. It’s not a daily driver, it’s a secondary vehicle, but with the price of gas filling it up can run $90 or so.

We’ve never once towed our boat, or boat trailer, in 18 months of boat ownership, although we’re paying $60/mo to store the doggone trailer. We moor the boat in Brownsville. We have a mechanic that works on it in the water. We have family that can clean up the bottom, outdrive and engine while it’s still in the water. And if we really need it, Miller Bay or other area marinas can haul it out and and work on it dry.

Sure, a truck is handy for hauling, but we’ve never really hauled anything in it we couldn’t tote around in our minivan. It’s just a needless and rather spendy luxury at this point.

I’ve been looking at econocars online. My bro-in-law – he’s a serious commuter – just bought a little tiny red Toyota Yaris. I haven’t seen his Yaris, but I’ve had roller skate cars before (a Ford Festiva and Escort, a Chevy Chevette) and gotten tired of them, they can be just a little too bare bones and flimsy. Somwhere, there has to be that balance between economy and features, and practicality and appeal.

My mom bought a Toyota Prius. It’s really cute, and gets amazing mileage. The model is a tad too small for me, and they are quite spendy.

I’ve rented a Toyota Matrix a couple of times on business trips. It’s been pretty comfortable, a step up from the Yaris in headroom, size and feature set. It’s still inexpensive, and gets fabulous mileage, but seems like a good little car.

Believe it or not, I’m not married to a Toyota. It’s just an odd trend for my family. I do need a hard-to-find balance between a small, compact, high-gas-mileage car, but have adequate leg and headroom. Toyota does pretty well there. I drove a Dodge Caliber on another recent business trip and it was horribly undersized and uncomfortable – I had to wrench my neck sideways every time to fit through the door into the seat.

We probably won’t actually go car shopping until July, but it’s been fun looking around online.

He: Artfully tousled salt and pepper hair. A dozen piercings per ear, including big hollow plugs in his earlobes, a pierced nose and a pierced lip. A soul patch. Big patchwork cargo pants. Doc Martens.

She: Dirty, fuschia streaked short shaggy hair. A half dozen piercings pier ear. A pierced lip. Visible tattoos. Carefully mix/matched thrift store gear, including a tatty, dirty plaid wool jacket, a Grateful Dead tie-dye shirt, menswear pants and Vans slipon shoes.

You have to wonder – if they have children, what are the poor kids going to do to rebel? Become CPAs or GAP store retail managers? And why aren’t the kids telling them what NOT to wear?

When I get feeling a little midlife restless, I learn something new. Last restless phase, I learned to solder jewelry. I don’t pierce and tattoo myself – although that’s probably my generation. I just don’t want to have to live with certain body parts pierced, tattooed, wrinkled and sagging when I’m 85.

• I overestimate what can be done in a day. Always have, always will. But getting my chunky behind out of bed earlier would help me get a lot more accomplished!

• There’s an awful lot of dog poop in my back yard, and the slugs are out already. I noticed this as I was upgrading our solar lanterns. We like our yard lit up a bit at night, it’s awfully hard to tell if our long haired black girl dog actually squats in the dark.
• Speaking of that, don’t listen to Brad Paisley’s new single “Ticks” while drinking coffee and driving, nor while you have to pee. I just about snorted coffee out my nose, and then howled in laughter through throughout the song. You can hear the song on his Myspace site.
• Beer batter fish and chips and chocolate truffles are a really sad dinner combination.
• Teens really dislike being deprived of electronics. They are bbbooooorrrrrreeeedddd and make vague accusations of child abuse. And then they make their parents listen to Lemon Demon over and over again on the car stereo. Mine got back on the computer at 12:01am.
• Since I had to pick up Ben in Seattle last night, I really, really missed the ability to check the Bainbridge ferry schedule and the Amtrak train status online. The ferry runs every 50 minutes, and the train is gonna get there when it gets there (most likely late) but I still missed knowing the details.
• When someone leaves the passenger door open on the car most of the day – gee, that would be one of my teen passengers – the car battery dies. Having this happen while the hubby is out of town is really poor timing.
• If you rip your home office apart to build shelves – and you need 12 shelf brackets and they come in a package of 12 – you will misplace at least one. Or more. Buy extra on the first trip!
• It’s awfully difficult to go to Home Despot for more brackets when your car is dead. I have a small inverter charger but it’s slow, and by the time the car would start, the store was closed.
• I really, really hate working in a cluttered, destroyed home office. This almost motivated me to to make a non-required trip across to my Seattle office just for a calm and non-trashed work environment. But with both boys here, I stayed home anyway.

So, I’m still working on reorganizing my home office today- finishing my closet shelves, putting everything back, sorting drawers and shelves and updating the decor and feng shui. If nowhere else, I should focus on enhancing opportunity and creativity in my office space.

I really, really wanted to make jewelry this weekend… maybe later this week.

When I cross the water to work in Seattle, I work in this very lovely, unique building. It’s the oldest skyscraper in Seattle, a building with loads of character and location advantages. It’s light, bright and comfortable, although I do admit it has a fairly inadequate heating/air conditioning system, cold and drafty in winter, and too hot in summer.

The building is in the Pioneer Square area, surrounded by fellow old buildings with character. The sidewalks are inset with purple block glass, skylights for the Seattle Underground. From the 3rd floor, I have a tiny wedge view of Elliott Bay. Those up higher in the building have pretty spectacular views, and Chinese Room and the observation deck are just beautiful.

The facility itself is an fascinating blend of old and new. The entryway is marble, onyx, brass and dark wood – but there are double doors to the omnipresent Starbucks franchise off the lobby. The brass elevators are all run by elevator operators, but some floors open onto Danish modern office space.

Our floor has the same marble flooring, dark wood wainscoting and brass trim. We actually had to modify our video conferencing meeting rooms, adding cloth baffling over the marble and wood, to reduce the echo and improve sound quality. In contrast to the antique surroundings, our workstations are all modern, curved cubes. There are no private offices, we all have cubes, even the directors and VPs. Not all office suites are laid out like this – each one has been done individually by its renter – but we inherited this one and its modern, egalitarian style from Disney.

I don’t know whether or not it will be approved. I can’t imagine redoing the plumbing and electrical for residential use without impacting some of the beautiful marble and wood features. It seems, per the news article, that the only truly protected parts of the building are the public areas, and the private areas are eligible for sledgehammer and paintbrush.

Would I want to live in the Smith Tower? I don’t think so. Pioneer Square is still a scary area after dark, with blatant drug deals, rampant homelessness, and lots of trash and human waste. (Picture courtesy of C4Chaos.) The kind of price that we’ll see on these condos will do nothing to alleviate those crushing problems! During the day, I hear emergency vehicle sirens every few minutes. Parking is often unavailable, costing $18/day and more at special event time.

What would happen to our company’s office? I have no idea. Our main offices, with some 1,000 employees, are in Anchorage. We only have 14 employees here and another 7 in a different Seattle location. Most of us in the Seattle area have the ability to telecommute, and rather enjoy that option. We do use the facility intermittently for Seattle-based collaborative work sessions, but that contrasts with weeks when only 3 or 4 folks are in the office.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

As I walked through the ferry terminal this morning, on my way down to street level, I saw an odd little man. He caught my attention because of the bright gold plastic crown he was wearing on his patchy bald head. He was about average height, gaunt, probably 40 but looked 60, and was once very handsome. He was wearing clean clothes, new shoes and a jean jacket, but when he asked for information about the next ferry, he spoke with slurred speech.

Then, downstairs, leaving the terminal, I had to fight my way through the usual swarm of taxi hacks. No, I don’t need a ride. I never do. And if I do, it won’t be from you, because you make me very, very cranky. Get out of my face and let me walk to work!

While waiting to cross Alaskan Way, a van pulled up in front of me – Ravishing Radish Catering. What a great business name, and they had a cute logo too!

Under the viaduct, I was accosted by my first panhandler of the morning, a haggard twitchy woman with a hooded sweatshirt pulled down over her eyes. “Got change, lady?” I thought, gee, for what, a $20? But I civilly answered, “No change, sorry.”

On the way up Yesler, I saw a curious homemade recumbent cycle. It was reengineered from a standard bike and what looked like the prow of a small rowboat surrounding the rider as a splashguard and parcel bin. The rider was quite comfortable.

At Pioneer Park, I walked by a homeless man on a bench, waking up for the morning in a puddle of urine. It was scary; he was moaning, audibly, and I wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to stand. He barely managed it, turned around, and vomited over the fence into the shrubs. I am still not sure whether I feel compassion, sadness or disgust.

My favorite panhandler was back at the corner of 1st and Yesler after a few weeks elsewhere, as well. He’s a middle aged African-American gentleman, always clean, kind and helpful. He always greets female passers-by with a “Good morning, gorgeous!” Whether you give him money or not, he responds with a “God bless you.” I’d like to know his story, as he seems eminently employable, but I guess everyone has more to them than meets the eye.

I got a cup of tea at the downstairs Starbucks (yeah, I know, corporate coffee isn’t great for the economy but there’s nothing else for blocks around) and took the beautiful brass elevator up to my relatively cozy Smith Tower office.

I have a long commute – an hour and fifteen minutes. And I get annoyed by my job – the budget woes, the work load, the politics, the constant challenge of achieving work-life balance. But you know what? I need to be on my knees every day giving thanks for what I have, my family, my home, my health, my job.

I have so much, and I wonder – how should I help? The question is, does giving money directly help, or simply enable? I choose not to, and give to United Way instead, which supports shelter, soup kitchen and food bank programs. Can I do more? What could I do personally to connect, make a difference, even if it’s only with one person, one family who has no home, no food, no hope?

As I walk by those folks on the street, I am ever aware: there but for the grace of God go I.