trinacriabob

Dracula !

Monte Cristo

First complete sentence I formed in Portuguese:"O Portugal tem as praias mais lindas em tudo o mundo" And that's the truth! Enjoy!

Hey guys: For those of you who celebrate it, have a great Easter Weekend. For the "mackerel snappers" in the bunch (derisive name for Catholics), remember it's Filet-O-Fish for lunch....just that 1 day a year....c'mon, we'll get through it. Sure would like to find a nice juicy broiled shark steak for dinner, though. Leave for Portland tomorrow and come back down Sunday night. My Mom said she won't be cooking any of the 3 days and, for Easter Sunday, these friends of hers who transplanted up there from LA within the last 6 months invited us to eat at their place. What are C&Ger Easter plans?

BJ

You might surprise yourself. I picked up and moved to ATL from the cushy comfort of my parents' home in LA a few years after college and made a go of it. I then returned out West (to Portland) to be near them and wound up leaving again, this time to Northern Cal. Could this have some meaning?

How many other "mistakes" are there in your family?

I am in one of those deals right now. Bad service couldn't be taken care of locally, so rather than 'eff with it with a regional manager, I am taking it up with a name I found on the corporate web site for the NY-based headquarters. My friends love my "poison pen" letters, as they call them. They are very diplomatic and professionally written, but they have an "edge." Therefore, they come to me when they want help writing one. I have written about 7 or 8 of them in my life, and in about 3/4 of the cases, the "big bosses" rectify the situation in my favor. I'm not a TOTAL jerk. I have also written about 4 letters to companies praising them for excellent service or an excellent product. If you don't stand up for yourself, nobody else will. So, are you one who takes issue with bad service? All the way to the top?

What kind of/year of car is it in, NDL?

break dance

Times 6 = 12 years....AT LEAST I've only bought new once and it's coming up on 15 years, next month! This way, the fact that a car depreciates so much when you drive it off the lot becomes a non-issue. If you take REALLY good care of it and if you start out with a LONG-LIVED powertrain to begin with, making a dozen years and 200,000 miles should be no problem.

I'm catching up to you, 76CT. 234,000 miles and she will be 15 y.o. on May 16th! No oil consumption in between oil changes, either.(In some Hispanic cultures, she's ready for her "quinc-anera" or however that's spelled!)

Hey, Pantho, happy early birthday Buick to you! Tell us about the powertrain!

The vehicle silhouette I see in the first post is both ugly and generic. Kudos to the Lucerne, at least it doesn't look like anything else!

objective

All right, PB! You with those trucks...and me with opera-windowed RWD GM mid-sizes and then W-body GM mid-sizes.

Ok, I'll drop the French now, but I can't resist the last one:Quoi? La voiture est "mal cul," aussi quand il pleut! As long as it's not "demi cul."

Regardez, il pleut Grand Prixs!!! Translation for non Francophones: Look, it's raining Grand Prixs!!! (Nous attendons pour les fotos, n'oubliez pas) Voila, post 4,000.

American Gothic

Pudding (bread pudding...delicious)

Wow, how opinions differ.I think the taillights were a great fix to the "grafted on pumpkins" of 1997-2003....good riddance to those. However, they messed with the front lights too much. Fortunately, for P-C-S, he is getting the GXP where the slightly squarer grilles look a little better. The triangular flare of the headlights themselves is a little over the top. That's my main beef with the car. I like everything else and it makes a lot of sense for me, too...though in base form.

Un-friggin'-believable! I looked up the exchange rate and the Euro is sitting at 1.33 x the US dollar. That means that the 100 Euro plane ticket which used to mean you'd pony up about $105 now means you will part with $ 133. When that multiplies through everything you touch on your European vacation, it gets ugly. SH1T!

Tammy Faye Bakker

Consider yourself lucky, Z. The greater NY area has a commendable transit system. America's second city got on board with one in the mid-90s (absurd) and it is nowhere near adequate for where it needs to go such that Angelenos, except for the poorest ones, continue to live in their cars.

You're not kidding!At one time, my Dad owned both a 76 Olds Cutlass Supreme with the 350 V8 and a 76 Buick Regal with the 231 ( 3.8 ) V6. My God, the difference in smoothness and engine sound was unbelievable. The V8 moved with a confident whoosh while the V6 sounded like it was farting. Not only that, it did shake at idle because of the lack of offsets in the crank that were later introduced. (That little engine has gone from 110 hp and shaking like it was in front of a firing squad all the way to 205 hp as a normally-aspirated product...what a chronology).