Chris & Maria's Blog

Spoiler warning!!!  Stop reading if you’ve not watched the last episode of LOST.

We just finished watching the season finale of LOST, and really enjoyed it!  I managed to record the phone call Kate gets, and it says, “The island needs you.  You have to go back before it’s too late.”  If you want the MP3, you can listen here:  http://www.chrisdotson.com/lost.mp3

As with all endings, it leaves more questions than it answers.  The rescue boat blows up, the island gets moved by Ben, Locke is put in charge of all of Ben’s old cronies, but then shows up dead in a coffin at the end of the episode.  Jack breaks into the funeral home, and while staring at Locke in the coffin Ben walks in behind him and tells him he can’t find the island alone.  Everyone has to go back…including Locke.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been experimenting with what is known as hypermiling. In case you don’t know what that is, you’re not alone. Until a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t know either. Essentially, it’s a collection of methods to get the most miles per gallon as you can by driving differently. It’s not magic. It’s just practicing some simple methods that make sense. Some, though, do not make sense and should not be done. Regardless of how many miles per gallon it gets you, drafting (riding on the tail of some other vehicle, such as tractor trailers) should not be done.

The one practice that I’ve been working on is coasting to a stop and trying to sit idle as little as possible. If your car is running and you’re sitting still, you are getting 0 miles per gallon. You’re expending fuel but not going anywhere. Also, most people approach a stop with their foot on the accelerator. They go straight from that to the brake. Instead, take your foot off the gas and just coast to the stop. If it’s a red light, try to coast long enough so that you don’t actually have to stop. Once you stop, you lose all the energy that you have built up. You have to spend fuel to get that momentum back.

So I tried this method after my last fill up, and I was able to increase my miles per gallon by about 30%! Most of my driving is in the city, and I actually got more miles on the tank than I did when I was doing all highway driving. I’ve got a faulty O2 sensor right now, and I need to get a shock replaced in the rear. Both of those things would increase my MPG even more.

There are other good techniques at the hypermiling website. Keep in mind there are other things on there that are dangerous and should not be done (drafting and extremely over inflating your tires). Use common sense if you want to try this. But if everyone did this, we would all save a lot of money and use a lot less petroleum.

We had fun looking at houses last weekend. One of them really caught our attention – it’s in a gorgeous neighbourhood (great re-sell potential), has a great layout with a couple of huge rooms, hardwood floors and a big fenced in yard with a cool bridge. We liked it enough to drag 3 friends and 3 family members to look at it again with us the next day but we’re still not decided.  It’s towards the top of our price range and yet still needs some work – new windows, new floors downstairs, lots doing in the yard. So we’ve decided to continue thinking about it, but also to continue looking. We’re getting to realise what we need and what we don’t like. I am incredibly lucky to even have the option of house-hunting and I know I will be more than happy with wherever we end up. Where I come from in England, you can’t get a one-bedroom flat for under £100k. The exchange rate is really in my favour at the moment.

Other random things going through my head today:

No spell check will ever stop me spelling neighbourhood with a u.

The cocoa-butter formula I bought to help get rid of scars from insect bites seems to be attracting the mosquitoes. I love irony.

Somebody should market P20 to the US. Nothing else has ever worked for me and my Irish skin won’t be able to survive a Tennessee summer without it. Luckily my sister has promised to send me some. Woohoo!

The Half-Blood Prince teaser trailer is due out any day and I am beyond excited!!

That is how you should make a superhero movie!!! Wow!  I can not articulate how cool that movie was.  Well, let me put it to you this way…I will see it at least one more time before the weekend is over.  I might see it two more times.  The “gang” is going to go tomorrow evening to see it in the same theater we went to last night, but I REALLY want to see this in IMAX.  Maybe I can take my little brother.

I struggle to find a weak spot in the film.  First off, suspend ALL disbelief.  Forget real world physics.  This was a comic book, and a pretty faithful adaptation thereof.  If you think you will have trouble believing that a man in an iron suit (technically it’s not iron, and that’s explained in the film) can fly, this probably isn’t the film for you.  The character development was good, the action was great, and the humor was well placed.  The line between what was CGI and what was practical effects wasn’t just blurred, it was gone.  I have a very good eye for that kind of thing, and not once did I see something as a CGI visual effect.  Those types of things distract me, and that never happened in this film.  If you know me, then you know what a huge huge HUGE Batman fan I am.  I have to say this movie rivals and possibly surpasses my fondness for Batman Begins.

Sundown in the City was going on last night and The Doobie Brothers were also performing at the Tennessee Theatre, so there was an interesting mix of people out and about downtown last night.  I’ll keep this post about Iron Man, and not about the other “shows” we both regretfully saw while going into and coming out of the theater.  Most of them were drunk, which always makes for some entertainment.  Let’s just saw we saw things that we should not have seen and wished we hadn’t.  While the movie was PG-13, these were definitely R.

It has officially started.  Last Tuesday we went looking around for a house.  The lease on the house we’re renting is up in June, so this is just shy of a mad dash to find a place.  We can continue to live where we are now, and pay month to month, but I have a fundamental problem with paying someone else’s mortgage.

Two of the the three we looked at on Tuesday were okay.  The first one smelled of smoke, and since neither of us are smokers or ever will be, we pretty much ruled that one out.  They all were the same model of house (split foyer), and I’m just not a big fan of that style.  I keep in mind that there is a high probability of moving again within the next 5 to 10 years, and I want a house that’s easy to sell.  Split foyer houses are always the hardest to sell.

We are set to go out again Saturday morning to look at 6 or 7 houses.  The styles are different this time around, but they won’t be as close to work as the other three.  I realize we can’t get everything we want, and I’m not being that picky (though it sounds as if I am).  I just want to provide my family with the best that we can get.  If we find anything amazing, we’ll post some pictures.