(Sunday Paper, Year IV, Issue 42)

Back when I bought my last car, it was pretty new, and it was a somewhat unique car.

It wasn’t for a few years that I started seeing other Toyota Venzas around.

It was the right car at the time for us - we were newly parents of three and the bigger backseat was a necessity to fit what was now three car seats.

So we upgraded from the Corolla.

But times have changed and a couple of weeks ago we took a trip to New York with the dog…and we did not have enough room. (Partly because I cleared out the back/trunk area for the dog but she chose to snuggle up to the girls in the backseat.)

So it was time for another upgrade…and for the first time in about a decade I had to buy a new car.

This time I bought a pretty new car…but it is not all that unique.

I got a Subaru Ascent, which I hadn’t heard of before the car search…but once I was considering it I started seeing them everywhere.

So I test drove it, and we bought it on Monday…I took it home on Wednesday.

I’ll write more about that in due time…but today it’s more about saying goodbye.

I’m not all that sentimental when it comes to cars…but I’ve not owned many cars. There was the Corolla from about 2002 until 2010 or 2011, when I got the Venza. And then it was the Venza until now. So this seems worth spending a moment on.

I think I thought maybe the Venza would be the car on which the girls would learn to drive. That might happen on the car I bought this week. (Who knows. Maybe they won’t start driving until they’re in their twenties.)

The Venza was the car I had for a pretty significant period of our lives, though - young kids, the big job-switch decision….and I certainly did a lot of driving to comedy shows in that car.

But I’m ready to move on from it and into the next phase of car memory-making.

It’ll take a little while to adjust from associating myself with a Venza to associating with an Ascent.

But I’m sure we’ll get there.

For now I’ll just worry about how dirty the kids and the dog will get my new car.

Writing

*Thanks for all the love on the Narratively piece. I had written that a few years ago and was happy to finally find it a home. The illustrations were a fun little bonus. If you haven’t read it, you can find the piece by clicking here.

Comedy

*Between writing, comedy, and yard work, something always has to give. Lately it’s been comedy. But - even though I haven’t been getting out much - I have been kind of inspired lately and I’ve written some new stuff…I think I need to find my way to some open mics to test it all out.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

*Back when I got the Venza I think satellite radio was somewhat new. I don’t know - maybe it was just new to me. But I got a three-month free preview of Sirius and it was baseball season and I was able to switch between some baseball games and I was happy. I didn’t explore it much.

But now I have a three-month free preview again and I know more about satellite radio and I’ve been checking out 50’s on 5, 60’s on 6, and 70’s on 7, because there’s no good oldies station around anymore…but I’ve spent the majority of my time on the Billy Joel station. When I lost a bunch of stuff on my phone (I probably haven’t talked about that a lot…maybe I’ll write about it some day) I lost all of the Billy Joel music I had downloaded from CDs onto my phone. So I just don’t listen to my favorite musician as much as I used to. But I have rediscovered my Billy Joel obsession this week. (Much to the chagrin of my family who have to listen to me play Billy Joel music on the piano every time I arrive back home from a car ride.)

But it won’t last much longer. Number one, it’s a limited time channel. Apparently it had already run its course - I remember when they had announced it (because it was Billy Joel news, which I still stay abreast of), but I didn’t realize until this week that it was a temporary channel. I texted my friend Justin that I was listening and he was telling me about temporary versus permanent Sirius channels…which I didn’t know was a thing. Then he looked for and found me the article - The Billy Joel channel came back literally the day before I got my car and started my three month preview. So I’ll have it for the life of my preview. And number two, I understand why it’s temporary - I’ve already listened to the station so much I can figure out the loop it’s on…it must be like a 72-hour or 96-hour type of thing. Because I’m hearing the same sequence of songs over again. So I’ll get tired of that, I’m sure.

Thoughts on Dog Ownership

*Some days are just love and licks and cuddles and some days are dog puke and biting everything.

Notes

*If you’re new to the Sunday Paper, welcome! There was a flurry of activity on the page this week because of the fainting story…thanks for giving the writing page a Like!

*If you stumbled across this without Liking the Facebook page, well, it’s not too late! You can Like the page by clicking here. And if you want to follow me on Twitter too - that’s at this link.

*And I don’t say it enough, but thanks to everyone who has liked the Facebook page for a long time and always checks in/likes the post when I post a Sunday Paper. It’s hard to know how many people are actually reading this week to week, so that helps…and it’s always amazing to me that anyone reads my brain dump every week. So thanks for that.

*After a long period of ‘it’s fine the way it is’ from when I first established the office, I finished setting up the office this week, give or a take a couple of items without a permanent place. I am looking forward to using it more and more…and I haven’t forgotten what I wrote months ago, that maybe a virtual tour of the office would be a fun thing to do.

*Are you like me, just absolutely shocked that it’s October 20th, and there’s so little time left in the month…and then the year shortly thereafter?

*I definitely considered calling this post “Arri-Venza-derci.” I am proud of myself for not doing so, but disappointed that I still felt the need to draw attention to the fact.