Posted inHome life

Loving my 2017 VW GTI, I’m willing to wait for the eighth generation

A few weeks ago I wondered if I could find car love with a Hyundai Kona after dating a VW GTI. That question may have been answered by today's drive from Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, across the Cascades, to our home in Salem. Driving on the often twisty and steep mountain roads reminded me how freaking fun the GTI is. Now, I readily admit that after a test drive with a 2019 Hyundai Kona, I can agree with this guy that the Kona arguably is a hot hatchback -- especially in comparison with its competitors, such as the…
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Posted inBlack Butte Ranch Family Home life

My first Pickleball experience was frustratingly fun

My daughter, Celeste, and I had overly optimistic expectations of how great we'd be at Pickleball. Since this racquet sport is sort of a cross between tennis and ping pong, both of which each of us has played a lot of, we figured that Pickleball would be a breeze for us. Well, we were partly correct.  It was a breezy day at the Pickleball courts at Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, where Celeste, me, my granddaughter Evelyn, and Laurel, my wife, tried the sport for the first time. That enabled me to blame some of my many mistakes on…
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Posted inSalem

CarMax to open store in Salem in February 2020

I love CarMax. My wife and I have sold three of our cars there, getting a better price than was offered by local dealerships here in Salem, Oregon. So I got excited when someone told me that they'd seen a sign near the I-5 freeway saying that a CarMax store was coming to town. It's taken more than five years for this to happen since a February 2014 Statesman Journal story by Michael Rose was titled, "CarMax on the course toward Salem location." CarMax Inc., a giant in the used car business with 130 locations nationwide, has started laying the…
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Posted inHome life

Our 2018 Chevy Volt lost half its value in 16 months

Today we said goodbye to our third, and last, Chevy Volt. My wife has loved the car so much, we've leased three Volts: in 2012, 2015, and 2018.  It seemed like a good idea to lease, rather than buy, given the steady improvements in battery performance. (The Volt is a plug-in hybrid vehicle that switches over to a gas engine/generator after about 45-50 miles of all-electric driving.) But we didn't anticipate that we'd buy a 2019 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid to replace our 2014 Highlander -- which came to seem like too large a car for our tastes. Plus it had…
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Posted inBooks Home life

I’ve written a new book: “Break Free of Dogma”

It feels great to have my new book go live on Amazon. My views about life, spirituality, God, and other Big Ideas have changed a lot since I wrote my previous three books.  I still agree with much of what I said in them, but some parts make me sort of cringe. Break Free of Dogma is much closer to my current atheist philosophical perspective.  It consists of 93 posts that I selected from the early years of my Church of the Churchless blog, 2004-06. So it was pretty easy to fashion, since I'd already written most of the content. Just…
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Posted inEntertainment Home life

I hate DirecTV even more than I hate Trump

Let me explain the title of this blog post. Trump isn't sitting under our television, controlling what my wife and I are able to watch in our rural south Salem (Oregon) home where the only TV choices are crappy DirecTV and crappy Dish Network. So DirecTV has a much larger direct impact on my life than Donald Trump does. That's why I'm complaining about DirecTV rather than Trump, even though both are hugely irritating. There's always something to hate about DirecTV. Let me count three of the ways, starting with the most recent -- which is the biggest current reason…
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Posted inHome life

Can I find car-love with a Hyundai Kona after dating a VW GTI?

It feels like it could be time to break up with my 2017 VW GTI. We've had close to three years together. I love her a lot. Our only rough spot came when her moonroof started to rattle, and it took a really long time for a dealer to figure out what the problem was, and to fix it. Still, all of my car relationships come to an end. And I've been watching a lot of videos about what could be my next car-love, a 2020 Hyundai Kona. The 2019 model is fine, but there's a few features on my…
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Posted inSalem

Hood House will provide housing for five homeless Salem women

There's so much wrong going on in the world, it's refreshing to be able to report on something very much right. Russ and Delana Beaton, long-time advocates for the homeless here in Salem, Oregon, have created an innovative housing opportunity for five previously homeless women. The Beatons are members of a monthly discussion group that my wife and I belong to, so we've been kept up to date on the progress of their Hood House -- named for the street it sits on in northeast Salem. Here's how Hood House was described by Delana in an emailed invite to last…
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