Gadget envy. My wife just bought a new car -- of itself a kind of garage envy. When they first came out a couple of years ago I bought a Honda Accord Hybrid and felt quite smug and environmentally attuned. In truth, it doesn't get great gas mileage -- employing its hybrid technology to boost power rather than mileage -- but it felt good, nonetheless. And it is playfully equipped with more electronic toys than a driver ought to manage. I rationalize them because I spend a lot of time in the car and I love my music. I like having options.
Now Lori has upped the ante with a new Toyota Prius -- she is a Toyota kind of girl -- and the car, itself, is a fascination. Schedules have been such that, while I have sat it in, I have neither been able to ride in it nor drive it. Ah! Patience. And it has all these programmable features; more than the standard radio presets, we need to program the built-in garage door opener and the Bluetooth telephone connection. And, of course, after trying late last night we discovered that neither is as easy as the manual describes. Those will be tasks for another day.
And therein lies my problem. I don't want to wait for another day. I want to get it done immediately. I want to check out how it works and experiment and load it up with data. I want to...well...play.
Lori finds all this a distraction. It's a car, not a toy, and she has places to go and things to do -- and at 50-60 miles per gallon, she is proudly able to go there and do them. The details can wait.
Removing, now, my tongue from my cheek -- and all electronic curiosity aside -- it feels good to be making some changes we believe are good for the world. I suppose we had better be careful which SUV-drivers to sneer at; both of our vehicles are sizewise on the "70-pound-weakling" side. But it will be nice to merely "wince" when we notice the newest price of gas, instead of aching and trying to catch our breath.
Now Lori has upped the ante with a new Toyota Prius -- she is a Toyota kind of girl -- and the car, itself, is a fascination. Schedules have been such that, while I have sat it in, I have neither been able to ride in it nor drive it. Ah! Patience. And it has all these programmable features; more than the standard radio presets, we need to program the built-in garage door opener and the Bluetooth telephone connection. And, of course, after trying late last night we discovered that neither is as easy as the manual describes. Those will be tasks for another day.
And therein lies my problem. I don't want to wait for another day. I want to get it done immediately. I want to check out how it works and experiment and load it up with data. I want to...well...play.
Lori finds all this a distraction. It's a car, not a toy, and she has places to go and things to do -- and at 50-60 miles per gallon, she is proudly able to go there and do them. The details can wait.
Removing, now, my tongue from my cheek -- and all electronic curiosity aside -- it feels good to be making some changes we believe are good for the world. I suppose we had better be careful which SUV-drivers to sneer at; both of our vehicles are sizewise on the "70-pound-weakling" side. But it will be nice to merely "wince" when we notice the newest price of gas, instead of aching and trying to catch our breath.
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