Home life

I realize that leaf blowers are controversial. The gas-powered blowers are noisy. If I lived in the city, I'd find them annoying. But my wife and I live on ten acres in rural south Salem, where a leaf blower is not only unobjectionable for our distant neighbors, but a necessity for what I call the Leaf War I engage in every autumn. It's a strange sort of war, because I don't have a gripe with the numerous large oaks that surround our house, nor the deciduous trees that grace our large yard. They're just doing their leaf-dropping thing in accord…

Hey, Subaru, I'm available. To be in one of your commercials. Here's my pitch. I don't have an agent, yet, so you'll need to contact me directly to take advantage of this oh-so-great offer. Lincoln has Matthew McConaughey. Subaru can have Brian Hines. Why? Because... I'm a 70-something baby boomer who, until today, looked upon the Subaru Crosstrek with amusement. Perhaps even with some disdain. Yeah, I saw them everywhere here in Salem, Oregon, along with Subaru Foresters, Outbacks, and other models with outdoorsy names. Sometimes the Lifesource Natural Foods parking lot has so many Subarus in it, I thought…

Thanks for nothing, Toyota and GM. It's deeply irritating that you've chosen to join with the Trump administration in challenging the longstanding federal law that has allowed California and 12 other states to require stricter auto emissions than the national standard. A LA Times opinion piece, "By siding with Trump on emissions, GM, Chrysler and Toyota are asking for industry chaos," describes what's at stake here. General Motors, Fiat Chrysler and Toyota say the reason they’re backing the Trump administration in its assault on California’s decades-old campaign to reduce auto emissions is to avoid fragmenting the industry in search of…

I have an easy answer to the title of this blog post: almost exactly what I do on any other day. After all, I'm 71,  not seven. A birthday party of any sort was the farthest thing from my mind. I enjoy my usual Monday routine. So I followed it, with a few exceptions. Reading and meditation in the morning -- check. Grocery shopping in early afternoon-- check. Tai Chi class in late afternoon -- check. Dog walk in early evening -- check. The big surprise of my birthday came when I unlocked our mailbox. There it was, a birthday…

In case the audio on my "Wanted" video isn't clearly recognizable by Giant Mutant Squirrels, and they're reading this blog post, I'm hoping they will pay a visit to our home to deal with the amazingly high number of acorns in our yard -- as documented in the video. More than we've ever seen. A bit of Googling taught me that oak trees go through regular cycles of many/few acorns, seemingly as an evolutionary adaptation. When there are lots of acorns, animals like squirrels can't eat them all, which leaves many acorns to become new oak trees. That's great for…

I've been car window-shopping recently. OK, not via a window, really, but through the Internet. Just when I thought I'd hold onto my 2017 VW GTI for a while, until the next-generation Mk8 Golf/GTI comes to the United States in 2020 as a 2021 model, today I decided to take a closer look at VW's electric vehicles that will be introduced at the Frankfurt Auto Show this month. My new idea is that I could keep my GTI for longer trips, such as when I go to our co-owned Black Butte Ranch house in central Oregon. Then my wife and…

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…

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…

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…

When you live on ten acres in rural south Salem, there's always something going wrong. I am that "you," along with my wife, so I know what I'm talking about. OK, not always, because that would be 24/7. But definitely things go wrong often. Which happened a couple of weeks ago when we noticed that two of our sprinklers were mysteriously running longer than they should have.  In fact, they wouldn't shut off at all. So I had to turn off the water to the entire sprinkler system while we figured out what the problem was. A control valve, obviously,…

Here's a great opportunity for someone who wants a deal on a top-of-the-line 2018 Chevy Volt with just 8,230 miles that had a sticker price of $40,865.  My wife and I are leasing this Volt, which is the Premier model. This is our third 3-year lease on a Volt, having leased 2012 and 2015 Volts previously. We like the car a lot, but want to sell it after buying a 2019 RAV4 Hybrid recently, since we don't need three cars (also have a VW GTI). So a buyer of this car would need to wait a bit for us to…