Hotaru just went in for her 33,000 mile service last Thursday. I was happy to not have to pay anything for this maintainence because I am seriously broke. On Friday, I spent the day with Rebekah at Recollections and we exchanged gifts. We got each other things off of our A Cherry On Top wishlists. It was great getting together with her. She always brings out the creativity in me. She made this wonderful photo gift using wooden blocks that showed different people in her family. She was inspired by Donna Downey’s book Photo Decor.

When I got home that evening, we packed our things to go to NY for Christmas. I burned 3 new DDR mix CD’s for the trip and labeled them with the label maker. Once on the road, we put in all 3 mix CD’s and 2 new ones that I had recently purchased - Notorius BIG Duets and the Roll Bounce soundtrack - into the in dash 6 disc changer. I had wanted to put my Jamiroquai CD in there as well, but I decided against it. Good thing I did because once we crossed into NJ, the first mix CD started to skip. I knew that the PC burner had been acting funny lately, so we attempted to skip to the next CD and we heard weird sounds coming from the changer. We tried to eject the CD - PLAYER ERROR came up. We tried to switch to another disc - PLAYER ERROR. We finally got disc 4 to eject. We tried to insert it again - CHANGER FULL. We knew at that point we were in trouble. We tried to eject other discs minutes later thinking it would right itself - PLAYER ERROR. We called Marvin to investigate some possibilities for us, but nothing came up. What he did find was that CD’s with labels are not recommended to go in multi-disc in dash changers. We have been putting labeled discs in there for about as long as we had the car with no problems until now. So we had to listen to the radio for the remainder of the trip and all the way back home.

I brought Taru to Covington to get the changer fixed since it is under warranty. An hour later, I have a conversation that went like this:

Mr. Burris: Mrs. Kendall-Diaz, your car is ready
K-D: Cool! That was fast!
Mr. Burris: It will be a 3-4 days before we get the part back
K-D: Excuse me???
Mr. Burris: Oh - no one told you, huh…we had to remove the radio and ship it out to be fixed
K-D: Oh…okay…thanks for letting me know…have a good day!

I get to the car and it looks as if her radio had been stolen. There is a huge hole where here audio unit once was and you can see clear inside the dash. Its a good thing that her engine and exhaust sound great otherwise I would have been a little more pissed.

So I go from the dealership to VEIP to get her emissions test. I pull up and pay the attendant. I then watch as he gives the car the once over, touches her spoiler and proceeds with the test. When he is done, he comes back with a grin and leaves my door open. Before I take off, he says “man - your car is really cool!”. I thank him and pull off with a smile on my face.

Today, on our way to Ft. Meade, we get on to 295 and I look in the rearview mirror. At that moment I see rolling perfection - a Black Pontiac Solstice. I barely keep myself together as I alert Will to get the camera. Now you may be thinking ‘it’s just a Solstice’, but to us GM nuts, it is much more than that. It is one of those cars that you lust over and seeing this car on the road as opposed to on a turntable at a show or a magazine just made our hearts race. It was absolutely beautiful and had a better road presence than magazines would have you think. Given the limited availability of the car added to our excitement of actually being able to see one. I honked at the guy and gave him a thumbs up as he passed by. We were able to snap a couple of pictures before getting off of our exit.

Yeah…I’m simple…but you gotta love me!