Vehicle Changing

This past weekend I had to relinquish the keys to Little Blue. Over ten years of my life was spent using the 2003 Prius. Now I have a new vehicle which will travel with me to Canada.

The decision was originally one that I wanted to pass off; my parents had offered me their 2011 CRV. Then two days after getting back into California - a warning light. I was just outside of Napa city, about an hour and half drive from home, so I schedule a check-up for when I get back. On the drive home the warning light persisted. Here I was in my favorite car seeing a warning light which I had never seen before, dreadfully hoping that it wasn't a serious issue - but of course it was. Turns out the inverter cooling pump for the hybrid system was going out, a repair that would set me back 550$ on a vehicle only worth 2k at this point. The decision was made, I would be giving up Little Blue.

The story of woes doesn't end there though. At first I had thought I would try to make myself a bit more independent and find a vehicle myself. Through CarMax I put in some requirements:
Two days after testing out the Coop, I'm driving with the CRV in LA visiting my brother. He was off at work so I figure I'd go to Knott's Berry Farm, it had been many years since I last went and I just got a Cedar Fair Premium Pass at Great America. On my way to Knott's though... I get in a freaking car accident.

Now let me set the scene for you: I was in some fairly heavy traffic around 10:30 am, was only going 15-20 mph with some stop and go. This small sedan in front of me swerves over into the right lane without recognizing that the Semi in front of him in that lane was slowing to a stop. As soon as this sedan gets into the lane - SWISH - RIGHT BACK IN FRONT OF ME! In a split second decision I swerve to the left to avoid T-Boning this idiot. After avoiding the sedan though, the truck in the lane next to me hits my bumper. Now I don't blame the truck driver, this was a split second decision and there wasn't much they could've done.

So now I'm having to deal with the insurance on that. This, by the way, is the second time I've been rear-ended in this CRV in the past year! So now the CRV is going to be known as Bad-Juju, or BJ for short. So I'll be driving across the country and into Canada with a fully packed BJ.

UPDATE: The day I had intended to leave BJ decided to drain its batteries while I was loading it. So I couldn't actually leave today.

A New Chapter

These past few weeks have been full of life changes for me.

Last month I finished my tenure at UTRGV and made my excursion back to California. In two days I drove from Brownsville, Texas back to my parents place in California. While I had been expecting to take a summer off and getting to travel some, well toooooo bad for me, PhD project is more important! I leave for Ontario, Canada in like 10 days, because who really needs time off?

Let's take a quick look at that position. Remember how a few months back I had a decent list of potential PhD project? Welp... didn't get any of those. Or rather, some I just didn't hear back from, some I didn't get, and one requested documents that just never arrived for them (freaking IB still haunts me to this day). Instead, I will be studying unisexual salamanders on an island in the middle of Lake Erie. 

Now that I've moved back with my parents though, I'm taking some time to downsize and become more mobile (after all I need to get out to Canada). What does this entail? Clothing - PURGED, Books - PURGED, Games - PURGED, old notes - PURGED, and most upsetting of all... Little Blue - soon to be purged... (more on that in a separate post).

But, whilst in this process I'm trying to take the time to inject some other habits. I figure that major life events are perfect times to change up routines. So that means more of this... the writing.. ha, we'll see how well that goes. More importantly for me though, I'm making more time for myself to sit back and read, because there's always a backlog of books to go through.