8.5 hours of sleep last night... i woke up on my own this morning without the alarm (5:27am), got my butt out of bed, and i was on my wayyyyy.

nice ride in... listened to a podcast about giorgio vasari's 'the lives of the artists,' (an 'in our time' podcast via the bbc)... terrific program, and this was a particularly interesting show for me... actually my mind started to wander during the program thinking of my penpal friend from france.... i consider her a dear friend despite only spending a couple of hours with her on a train.... we've communicated via email + snail-mail.... i dunno... a different world... a different time/universe etc.... i think she and i would be good friends.  she's very captivating (she's extremely intelligent, knowledgeable about topics that i'm interested in but have no real knowledge.... arts... literature.... she went to grad-school at the louvre.... i mean come on!).  i'm very content with kim though... it's nice to have friends from other lands.

okay onto more things....

kim and i drove to syracuse this past weekend so that she could buy alex's black jetta (alex, the owner of digitalexpressions!).... kim got her car smashed-in on jan 3rd, and it's been.... difficult ever since (although we count our blessings that she wasn't badly injured, and the dog wasn't in the car at the time etc).... lots of driving to/from her parents' place to drop off the dog.... lots of trips to/from locations to drive her around (which is what she essentially did for me when i was back in dental school, so i couldn't complain too much, but it was definitely draining on me especially with my already lonnnnng work schedule). 

anyhow, alex already has another terrific car, and was keeping the black jetta anticipating a difficult winter (where it would be more ideal to drive)... however, serendipidously, the winter hasn't been so bad, and he realized he was using his new car more and more.  alex knew of kim's (and indirectly my) situation, and made an INCREDIBLY generous offer of the car for basically peanuts.... not only did he get the car all tuned-up, replacing the battery, replaced the wiper-motor.... he friggin had ALL of the paperwork that i would have been obvlivious to (sale, title, tax forms etc)... really fantastic.  i mean, he REALLY came to bat for us....

kim bought the car... we didn't stay long in syracuse.... we DID go to alex's work though which was enlightening... it looked like a air-hanger that was sectioned into a shipping department and a football field of cubicles with hundreds of computers everywhere.... many conference rooms.... all on one floor as far as i could tell.  kim and i were fascinated by the giant map of the world on the huge wall... we were able to see the cities that alden (DE user nedlaT) has travelled to in china.... very cool (tianjing, chengdu, zhengzhou).

on sunday we cleaned both my car and the black jetta, inside and out (kim has spilled a drink while driving home from syracuse... all the more reason for the thorough detailing).... the jetta looks friggin great. 

yesterday (tuesday) kim went to the DMV and got every detail sorted out with the black jetta... her mom is going to drop the old plates in the mail (with alex's info included) today.... the car insurance is taken care of.... what a smooth transition!  phew!

~xander-man