My car went in the shop for two days this week (replace all the tires, repair a mis-aligned headlight), and I rented a car from the dealership. On the phone, they told me that they'd give me a Corolla, which was fine since my car is a 2003 Prius, in other words small, and a big car would be awkward.
Instead of a Corolla, they gave me . . . a Scion xB. I think the xB stands for "extra boxy." It looks like someone took a minivan and smushed it down with a rectangular compressor. An unspeakably dorky car—and I swear its dorkiness is an idiot magnet, since people tried to accelerate past me in lanes that were ending in ten feet, stepped out in front of me while I had the green light, all kinds of moronic behavior. (It was extremely sluggish accelerating up to highway speeds, between about 40 and 50 mph, but those weren't the times when people were acting like idiots around me.)
I was very glad to get my cute little car back.
This weekend we did Christmas at my parents' house, driving out Friday night. Saturday morning we saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and in the afternoon and evening I cooked two meat pies and a batch of baked mac & cheese, while listening to football on the living room TV. A good football day, as the Pats shut out the Buccaneers (who are good, unlike the Bills—but I still don't want to hear people talk about them as Super Bowl contenders) and the Giants beat the Chiefs with a record-setting performance from Tiki Barber. The movie was fine, given what it had to work with, and I do think the kids' acting has improved still more; but Hermione's dress was weird, Cedric had really big eyebrows (is this a British notion of attractiveness? Harry has the same thing going), and the ending could have stood thirty seconds' more exposition. The third is probably going to remain the best for the fresh quirky visuals and tight story.
Today my dad's side of the family came down, which was good because it's been a while since I've seen them for a holiday (and it's been years since I saw my step-cousin S.). My baby first-cousin-once-removed is very serious looking but was thrilled by the gift of a "Sit and Spin" toy, so that was very cute. And my parents' dog Truman did his usual crowd-pleasing performance of shredding wrapping paper as people opened their gifts. Then we sleepily drove off, made it safe home to our happy dog (who has already put a hole in the super-tough toy that my parents got her), and got stuff put away. It's going to be another long week at work, I'm afraid, but I'll try to get some Genji in, finish that monster Rent post, and so forth.