A New Car!

After some thinking, discussing, figuring, looking, and doing research we broke down and bought a new car. Yup. A. Brand. New. Car. Now, this isn't something we do much. Lots of folks change their rides every 3-5 years. Not us. We keep 'em until the wheels fall off. Except for the Neon (never a Chrysler product again) we usually get around 300,000 miles out of our cars. And newer cars are even better.

We decided we couldn't afford a Prius at this time so we opted for one of the cheapest cars on the market. The Ford Fiesta. It's got a great safety rating and is appointed nicely for the price. And so far I'm averaging 34 mph. Not too bad for a non-hybrid car.

This particular car is the SFE model that is supposed be be a bit more fuel efficient than the other models. I thought I wanted a hatch back but the trunk is larger than in the hatchback. It has the Sync system, ambient lighting, Sirius radio, heated seats and a few more bells and whistles I haven't figured out yet.

I have to remind D to drive it. He gets in the truck and goes. The idea is to not put any more miles on the truck than we need to because it would be the most expensive vehicle to replace and can you say $100 to fill the gas tank? Then we leave the Prius in the driveway except for Darryl's commute thereby saving miles on it and it will last longer. The dealer thinks it'll go 500,000 but we will see about that.

The thing Darryl likes most about the car is the name of the color. It's called Candy Apple Metallic and it's exactly the color of the car. He likes that it's not Urban Sunset Red or something. And here is the surprise. He's not happy about learning to use all the fancy tech stuff in the car. He won't even press a button to change the color of the lights in the car! In fact he's down right grumpy about the "new fangled gadgets"! Who'd a thunk?!

I took this picture of Charlotte as she was sitting on me in the bed this morning. This is as regal as she gets. She usually looks pretty goofy. Kelly was surprised at how tall she is. You can't really tell from the pictures of her. I thought this kinda shows it. I'm sitting up in bed and her front feet and back legs are straddling my legs. She's as tall as me if you stretch her vertically. She can look in the bedroom window with all four of her feet on the ground.

I apologize for the crappy pictures but I took them with my cell phone. I just didn't want to go get my camera. And sometimes you just have to capture the moment.

Charlotte is German!

So I have this wonderful dog that is now just a over a year old. We were told when we adopted her from the Escalon Animal Control that she was Great Dane and Bernese Mountain Dog. Well, that just didn't seem to fit so my curiosity got the best of me and I did research to find the company that did doggy DNA tests with the most breeds and generations. I bought the test, swabbed Charlotte's mouth and TA DA, a couple weeks later I have answers.

Unexpected answers. I would have never guessed answers. She is almost a designer dog. A designer dog being a breeding between two pure bred dogs. Almost.

All the way back on one side of Charlotte's family she is, indeed, a Great Dane. Back to her great grandparents. And I'm not sure you are aware but Great Danes are not Danish. They are German. Yes, the breed was developed in Germany.

Now the other side of Charlotte's family is a bit more complicated. Her great grandparents on that side are an undetermined mixed breeds and two (wait for it) German Shepherds. So one of Charlotte's grandparents was a pure bred German Shepard who messed around with a mixed breed who apparently had some German Shepard in it too because you will see by the numbers that she is a great deal German Shepard. So Charlotte's parents are a German Shepard/mutt and a pure bred Great Dane.

The numbers break down like this:
Great Dane 50%
German Shepard 40.41%
Bull Mastiff 7.29%
Basset Hound 1.21%
Rottweiler 0.22%
Norfolk Terrier 0.22%
English Setter 0.20%

Or we could break it down by country. Since the Bull Mastiff, Basset Hound, Norfolk Terrier (I still can't figure that out since it's a very small dog), and English Setter were all developed in England that makes Charlotte 8.92% English. And the Dane, Shepard, Rottweiler were all developed in Germany that makes Charlotte 91.08 % German.

So since she's almost a designer dog I will give her an almost designer dog breed name. Charlotte, I now pronounce you a Great Shepardane! After all she is great.

I wonder if there is a company out there that will test my DNA and tell me my ancestry breakdown so quickly, easily, and cheaply. Wouldn't that be fun to know?