One of the things I like least in life is dealing with cars. They have, frankly, no redeeming qualities whatsoever. First there’s the title, the inspections, and the insurance, all of which involve ridiculous legalese, byzantine rules and regulations, and signing piles of papers that only serve to support paper loving bureaucrats. The emissions and safety inspections of course must be done in person at incredibly inconvenient times. Then there’s the DMV which as far as I can tell exists only to teach people to be patient. Add on the gas, maintenance, and incomprehensible error codes and you have a recipe for what can only be describes as a hate-hate relationship. The worst thing about cars though is buying them. Arggghhhh. There’s a thousand makes, models, and variations. All the dealers haggle, the price structure is non-static, and you have to be an expert (or hire an expert) to know what condition the car is actually in. Each brand has a “reputation”, which is correlated to quality, which is supposed to be correlated to how much more life the car will give you. The problem is that none of those correlations are very strong, and even if they were, as an avowed car-hater I don’t know their reputations in the first place.

The reason for this rant is of course because I now have to buy a new car. Last Monday night while coming home from seeing Star Trek VI a teenage driver on the other side of the road swerved across the double yellow and hit us head on. Although the damage was minimal (I was driving slow because of the pouring rain, and hit the brakes pretty quickly), the insurance company is claiming the car is totaled, so now I have to buy a new car. Grrrrrr. The worst part is that while there are new features I’d like (bluetooth, audio in, and mp3 enabled), none of these are standard yet in mid size family sedan category, so I wasn’t planning on buying a new car for a couple more years. (And if you think I’m buying a car without those features now with a plan to trade it in for one with more features in a few years, you clearly don’t know my “drive it till it dies” philosophy of avoiding car buying).

Now of course comes the part where I ask for help. Here are the only things I actually care about for a car:

• 4 wheels and an engine.
• 4 door sedan (getting kids in and out of a 2 door is a pain)
• <80,000 miles
• Will turn on every time I turn the key and not give me problems. It must continue to do this for at least the next 8 years.
• the latch system.
• an audio in port so I can hook up my ipod, smart phone, kindle, or whatever future devices may one day exist.

Suggestions welcome. Especially with the last two features – since they’re not something that’s frequently mentioned in car ads, I don’t even know how to figure out what to look for.

Fast day fail

Originally uploaded by bachrach44

Wishing you a meaningful tisha b’av.

So far in 2010, DC has had:

1. Record snowfall
2. Record heat
3. An earthquake.

Just keep in mind that if god were to try and destroy a modern day city for sinfulness, DC would probably be high on the list.

Since I moved about a year ago I’ve met a lot of new people, which invariably involves having a lot of the same conversations many times. (What’s your name? Where did you move from? Where do you live? Buy or rent?, etc, etc). Since Rebecca often works on weekends, and I often meet new people in synagogue on shabbat, I’ve also had the following conversation about a dozen times:

Stranger: <something innocuous about the location of my wife, assuming, since I have a small child, that am in fact married and not a kidnapper>
Me: She’s working today.
Stranger: Where does she work?
Me: Children’s National Medical Center.
Stranger: Oh, is she a nurse?
Me: No, Doctor.

So far I don’t think I’ve met a single person who has concluded that my wife is a doctor, and at least a dozen who have concluded that she’s a nurse. I don’t think I have to tell you that if it was my wife explaining that I worked in a hospital, this number would almost certainly be reversed.