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We've got the cold. I think it hit -34 in town last night, so likely -37 or so here.
The new-to-me truck won't start, I think it both needs a new battery and the engine heater isn't working. So that's fun.
Yesterday Tucker jumped the truck and I went down to go get feed. It was snowing-- I know better than to go by the forecast rather than the observed weather and that was supposed to be the clear window-- and snow was behaving how it always behaves in deep cold. That is, it turns into a dust storm.
Solidly below -20 snow not only doesn't clump at all, it doesn't stick to surfaces. This means that with good snow tires the roads are great - they're clear, and snow tires will stick to them like summers won't. But. There is a ton of effectively weightless dust along the whole road that's tossed up by passing vehicles and, when it's snowing, by snowploughs. The dust is super reflective so a vehicle can be fifteen feet ahead of you and completely invisible, and because of the way the snow kicks up you can still see a couple feet of clear road and then just an ambiguous haze in which the car is hidden.
That is to say, it was a slow drive down and back. Folks up here don't have a great sense for putting on their lights in these conditions (lights give maybe an extra 6-8' of visibility in a cloud like this). Different folks had different strategies: if you follow a logging truck about four feet behind it, for instance, you can see its lights and you won't go off the road, and it's likely to stop more slowly than you if you catch the brake lights. Or, you can drive real fast into a cloud, slam on your brakes when you see lights a couple feet ahead of you going slowly, hope the person behind you sees your lights in time, and then slow down until there's visibility so you can speed up again and keep repeating the cycle. Of course, when a vehicle comes by going the other direction all visibility is lost for awhile too, including all sense of where the road is, and choices there involve braking and hoping the person behind is also braking, or keeping going and hoping you know where the road is-- if you're following someone's lights and can't see the stretch of road ahead this can be challenging.
I hung way back so I could see a clear full stopping distance of road ahead of me at all times, because I am just like that. Starting back I was behind a snowplough that was being followed by 2-4 cars in front of me (they were never at any point visible to me) and by the halfway mark home I had let maybe 30 vehicles pass including several logging trucks, a UPS van, etc. Note that none of them could pass the plough since the plough blocked visibility in both directions, so the line ahead of me just got longer and longer until the plough pulled over at the midway point and everyone went ahead.
It was a surreal experience in a lot of ways because of how quickly, easily, and completely vehicles disappear. I think one of the invisible vehicles immediately following the snowplough was a logging truck. I know at least 30 vehicles were ahead of me, led by a snowplough. But sometimes when the road did a long lazy curve it just looked a little bit snowy on the road and like there was no one there: something about the way the snow lifts and reflects makes it look more translucent than it actually is.
I got home without incident and with my winter driving caution re-tuned. It really is such a different beast than summer driving. Now I'm offloading the grain -- 2200lbs moved by bucket on top of the daily several hundred pounds of food and water carried by bucket out to animals. I'm moving slow. Cold steals my energy and this is a pretty intensive physical output too.
It'll get done though. One bit at a time.
The new-to-me truck won't start, I think it both needs a new battery and the engine heater isn't working. So that's fun.
Yesterday Tucker jumped the truck and I went down to go get feed. It was snowing-- I know better than to go by the forecast rather than the observed weather and that was supposed to be the clear window-- and snow was behaving how it always behaves in deep cold. That is, it turns into a dust storm.
Solidly below -20 snow not only doesn't clump at all, it doesn't stick to surfaces. This means that with good snow tires the roads are great - they're clear, and snow tires will stick to them like summers won't. But. There is a ton of effectively weightless dust along the whole road that's tossed up by passing vehicles and, when it's snowing, by snowploughs. The dust is super reflective so a vehicle can be fifteen feet ahead of you and completely invisible, and because of the way the snow kicks up you can still see a couple feet of clear road and then just an ambiguous haze in which the car is hidden.
That is to say, it was a slow drive down and back. Folks up here don't have a great sense for putting on their lights in these conditions (lights give maybe an extra 6-8' of visibility in a cloud like this). Different folks had different strategies: if you follow a logging truck about four feet behind it, for instance, you can see its lights and you won't go off the road, and it's likely to stop more slowly than you if you catch the brake lights. Or, you can drive real fast into a cloud, slam on your brakes when you see lights a couple feet ahead of you going slowly, hope the person behind you sees your lights in time, and then slow down until there's visibility so you can speed up again and keep repeating the cycle. Of course, when a vehicle comes by going the other direction all visibility is lost for awhile too, including all sense of where the road is, and choices there involve braking and hoping the person behind is also braking, or keeping going and hoping you know where the road is-- if you're following someone's lights and can't see the stretch of road ahead this can be challenging.
I hung way back so I could see a clear full stopping distance of road ahead of me at all times, because I am just like that. Starting back I was behind a snowplough that was being followed by 2-4 cars in front of me (they were never at any point visible to me) and by the halfway mark home I had let maybe 30 vehicles pass including several logging trucks, a UPS van, etc. Note that none of them could pass the plough since the plough blocked visibility in both directions, so the line ahead of me just got longer and longer until the plough pulled over at the midway point and everyone went ahead.
It was a surreal experience in a lot of ways because of how quickly, easily, and completely vehicles disappear. I think one of the invisible vehicles immediately following the snowplough was a logging truck. I know at least 30 vehicles were ahead of me, led by a snowplough. But sometimes when the road did a long lazy curve it just looked a little bit snowy on the road and like there was no one there: something about the way the snow lifts and reflects makes it look more translucent than it actually is.
I got home without incident and with my winter driving caution re-tuned. It really is such a different beast than summer driving. Now I'm offloading the grain -- 2200lbs moved by bucket on top of the daily several hundred pounds of food and water carried by bucket out to animals. I'm moving slow. Cold steals my energy and this is a pretty intensive physical output too.
It'll get done though. One bit at a time.
We've got the cold. I think it hit -34 in town last night, so likely -37 or so here.
The new-to-me truck won't start, I think it both needs a new battery and the engine heater isn't working. So that's fun.
Yesterday Tucker jumped the truck and I went down to go get feed. It was snowing-- I know better than to go by the forecast rather than the observed weather and that was supposed to be the clear window-- and snow was behaving how it always behaves in deep cold. That is, it turns into a dust storm.
Solidly below -20 snow not only doesn't clump at all, it doesn't stick to surfaces. This means that with good snow tires the roads are great - they're clear, and snow tires will stick to them like summers won't. But. There is a ton of effectively weightless dust along the whole road that's tossed up by passing vehicles and, when it's snowing, by snowploughs. The dust is super reflective so a vehicle can be fifteen feet ahead of you and completely invisible, and because of the way the snow kicks up you can still see a couple feet of clear road and then just an ambiguous haze in which the car is hidden.
That is to say, it was a slow drive down and back. Folks up here don't have a great sense for putting on their lights in these conditions (lights give maybe an extra 6-8' of visibility in a cloud like this). Different folks had different strategies: if you follow a logging truck about four feet behind it, for instance, you can see its lights and you won't go off the road, and it's likely to stop more slowly than you if you catch the brake lights. Or, you can drive real fast into a cloud, slam on your brakes when you see lights a couple feet ahead of you going slowly, hope the person behind you sees your lights in time, and then slow down until there's visibility so you can speed up again and keep repeating the cycle. Of course, when a vehicle comes by going the other direction all visibility is lost for awhile too, including all sense of where the road is, and choices there involve braking and hoping the person behind is also braking, or keeping going and hoping you know where the road is-- if you're following someone's lights and can't see the stretch of road ahead this can be challenging.
I hung way back so I could see a clear full stopping distance of road ahead of me at all times, because I am just like that. Starting back I was behind a snowplough that was being followed by 2-4 cars in front of me (they were never at any point visible to me) and by the halfway mark home I had let maybe 30 vehicles pass including several logging trucks, a UPS van, etc. Note that none of them could pass the plough since the plough blocked visibility in both directions, so the line ahead of me just got longer and longer until the plough pulled over at the midway point and everyone went ahead.
It was a surreal experience in a lot of ways because of how quickly, easily, and completely vehicles disappear. I think one of the invisible vehicles immediately following the snowplough was a logging truck. I know at least 30 vehicles were ahead of me, led by a snowplough. But sometimes when the road did a long lazy curve it just looked a little bit snowy on the road and like there was no one there: something about the way the snow lifts and reflects makes it look more translucent than it actually is.
I got home without incident and with my winter driving caution re-tuned. It really is such a different beast than summer driving. Now I'm offloading the grain -- 2200lbs moved by bucket on top of the daily several hundred pounds of food and water carried by bucket out to animals. I'm moving slow. Cold steals my energy and this is a pretty intensive physical output too.
It'll get done though. One bit at a time.
The new-to-me truck won't start, I think it both needs a new battery and the engine heater isn't working. So that's fun.
Yesterday Tucker jumped the truck and I went down to go get feed. It was snowing-- I know better than to go by the forecast rather than the observed weather and that was supposed to be the clear window-- and snow was behaving how it always behaves in deep cold. That is, it turns into a dust storm.
Solidly below -20 snow not only doesn't clump at all, it doesn't stick to surfaces. This means that with good snow tires the roads are great - they're clear, and snow tires will stick to them like summers won't. But. There is a ton of effectively weightless dust along the whole road that's tossed up by passing vehicles and, when it's snowing, by snowploughs. The dust is super reflective so a vehicle can be fifteen feet ahead of you and completely invisible, and because of the way the snow kicks up you can still see a couple feet of clear road and then just an ambiguous haze in which the car is hidden.
That is to say, it was a slow drive down and back. Folks up here don't have a great sense for putting on their lights in these conditions (lights give maybe an extra 6-8' of visibility in a cloud like this). Different folks had different strategies: if you follow a logging truck about four feet behind it, for instance, you can see its lights and you won't go off the road, and it's likely to stop more slowly than you if you catch the brake lights. Or, you can drive real fast into a cloud, slam on your brakes when you see lights a couple feet ahead of you going slowly, hope the person behind you sees your lights in time, and then slow down until there's visibility so you can speed up again and keep repeating the cycle. Of course, when a vehicle comes by going the other direction all visibility is lost for awhile too, including all sense of where the road is, and choices there involve braking and hoping the person behind is also braking, or keeping going and hoping you know where the road is-- if you're following someone's lights and can't see the stretch of road ahead this can be challenging.
I hung way back so I could see a clear full stopping distance of road ahead of me at all times, because I am just like that. Starting back I was behind a snowplough that was being followed by 2-4 cars in front of me (they were never at any point visible to me) and by the halfway mark home I had let maybe 30 vehicles pass including several logging trucks, a UPS van, etc. Note that none of them could pass the plough since the plough blocked visibility in both directions, so the line ahead of me just got longer and longer until the plough pulled over at the midway point and everyone went ahead.
It was a surreal experience in a lot of ways because of how quickly, easily, and completely vehicles disappear. I think one of the invisible vehicles immediately following the snowplough was a logging truck. I know at least 30 vehicles were ahead of me, led by a snowplough. But sometimes when the road did a long lazy curve it just looked a little bit snowy on the road and like there was no one there: something about the way the snow lifts and reflects makes it look more translucent than it actually is.
I got home without incident and with my winter driving caution re-tuned. It really is such a different beast than summer driving. Now I'm offloading the grain -- 2200lbs moved by bucket on top of the daily several hundred pounds of food and water carried by bucket out to animals. I'm moving slow. Cold steals my energy and this is a pretty intensive physical output too.
It'll get done though. One bit at a time.
Civil blood
Oct. 30th, 2021 06:26 pmThe world I live in doesn't have a thing/person binary.
It has only a functional boundary around entities, depending on the scale on which I'm working at the time. Biological definitions are ruled by their exceptions and I find no truths in common wisdom or social definitions of seperateness.
As such my experience of life is like passing through a school of flowing fish and seaweed: it's contact upon contact, sensation upon sensation, with what might be conceived of as environment, individual, and superindividual all at once.
When I sink into this feeling I can report on it only from the very edge of language. My counselor asked, what would it look like to not always be translating for people? She doesn't understand that _people_ is literal. In order to interact with humans I need to translate into words, into behaviours, into expressions. When I have true space I become what I've never seen elsewhere and cannot explain.
Untranslated, I feel everything as having a real existence. When I sat down to write this, before I made it though the preamble, I was going to say: I feel everything as alive. I can't access a meaningful societal definition of alive right now, though, I can't access the culture where "people are not things" is supposed to have meaning. Instead things are all imbued with meaning, with capacity to both give and recieve relationship. Things have an innate concept of self which is mediated through our relationship to them, through their relationship with humans which are meaning-making machines and through their relationship to actual reality, which humans access only as the barest flicker in a dark cave.
I am in relationship to a bucket or a car or a landscape as much as I am to humans. They are all deserving of respect and acknowledgement and care from me. What I understand of my society feels flickers of this around the edges but is mostly silent on this web of connection, relationship, gift, and obligation.
Those relationships get neglected when I live too much in the human world. Whether or not I fulfill my physical obligations I forget the attitude of respect and acknowledgement, the internal emotional nod of greeting and recognition towards what I interact with. It's a loss and an impoverishment of my life to forget these connections. When I don't take the time to make my meanings then things are left meaningless.
The human world seems in many ways to engage in an assault on meaning. Consumerism is the encouragement of fungibility and momentary functionality. The minimalist fashion of the day tells us never to love any object for relationships we have to it: if it's not immediately useful we should discard it. When we look for relaxation or joy we're told to go to a new location, one with which we have no relationship, to always be seeking out the new rather than deepening our relationship to our current space. Novelty is privileged over meaning. Scarcity of relationship is privileged over abundance. Monogamy and the nuclear family is only this pattern writ into other humans: few and prescribed relationships that must be discarded if we want different or more, and characterized as less meaningful if abundance is grasped for.
I met someone who relates to landscape how I do: as entities. They live far away and let me language through concepts I've never tried to express. I think it's good for me. There's a meme that talks about how to rewild yourself: don't wear clothes and do move your body how it wants to be moved, it says. That's novice level. The next step is to move out of human exceptionalism and take a place in the community of everything around. We move so far away from that, we declare war on the idea of meaningful relating to anything except humans even to the extent that we're willing to extinguish species rather than navigate relationship with them.
Meanwhile I'm here in relationship tonight. It's a lot of intense sensation I've been away from for awhile. Time to turn off the laptop and experience it, possibly while watching for the northern lights.
It has only a functional boundary around entities, depending on the scale on which I'm working at the time. Biological definitions are ruled by their exceptions and I find no truths in common wisdom or social definitions of seperateness.
As such my experience of life is like passing through a school of flowing fish and seaweed: it's contact upon contact, sensation upon sensation, with what might be conceived of as environment, individual, and superindividual all at once.
When I sink into this feeling I can report on it only from the very edge of language. My counselor asked, what would it look like to not always be translating for people? She doesn't understand that _people_ is literal. In order to interact with humans I need to translate into words, into behaviours, into expressions. When I have true space I become what I've never seen elsewhere and cannot explain.
Untranslated, I feel everything as having a real existence. When I sat down to write this, before I made it though the preamble, I was going to say: I feel everything as alive. I can't access a meaningful societal definition of alive right now, though, I can't access the culture where "people are not things" is supposed to have meaning. Instead things are all imbued with meaning, with capacity to both give and recieve relationship. Things have an innate concept of self which is mediated through our relationship to them, through their relationship with humans which are meaning-making machines and through their relationship to actual reality, which humans access only as the barest flicker in a dark cave.
I am in relationship to a bucket or a car or a landscape as much as I am to humans. They are all deserving of respect and acknowledgement and care from me. What I understand of my society feels flickers of this around the edges but is mostly silent on this web of connection, relationship, gift, and obligation.
Those relationships get neglected when I live too much in the human world. Whether or not I fulfill my physical obligations I forget the attitude of respect and acknowledgement, the internal emotional nod of greeting and recognition towards what I interact with. It's a loss and an impoverishment of my life to forget these connections. When I don't take the time to make my meanings then things are left meaningless.
The human world seems in many ways to engage in an assault on meaning. Consumerism is the encouragement of fungibility and momentary functionality. The minimalist fashion of the day tells us never to love any object for relationships we have to it: if it's not immediately useful we should discard it. When we look for relaxation or joy we're told to go to a new location, one with which we have no relationship, to always be seeking out the new rather than deepening our relationship to our current space. Novelty is privileged over meaning. Scarcity of relationship is privileged over abundance. Monogamy and the nuclear family is only this pattern writ into other humans: few and prescribed relationships that must be discarded if we want different or more, and characterized as less meaningful if abundance is grasped for.
I met someone who relates to landscape how I do: as entities. They live far away and let me language through concepts I've never tried to express. I think it's good for me. There's a meme that talks about how to rewild yourself: don't wear clothes and do move your body how it wants to be moved, it says. That's novice level. The next step is to move out of human exceptionalism and take a place in the community of everything around. We move so far away from that, we declare war on the idea of meaningful relating to anything except humans even to the extent that we're willing to extinguish species rather than navigate relationship with them.
Meanwhile I'm here in relationship tonight. It's a lot of intense sensation I've been away from for awhile. Time to turn off the laptop and experience it, possibly while watching for the northern lights.
Decision-making structure
Oct. 12th, 2021 09:54 amI'm buying a truck.
I've been using the 4runner and a trailer for awhile but it's been challenging: I need to know when I'll need it, I can't pick up feed or something on the way home unless I bring and park and haul the trailer all day. I've been getting the grocery store food in the 4runner with the seats down and that sucks, honestly. It's bad for the vehicle even with cardboard down, stuff doesn't fit well. Problematic. So it's time for a truck.
I've decided on a 2nd gen Toyota Tundra with the 5.7L engine. They're a solid truck and they shouldn't blow up after 200-300k. The engine is the same fuel efficiency as my 4runner's current 4.7L but can offer more horsepower which means I can tow real weight if I need. After a trip to try some out, I've decided on a longbox (8' box). This is definitely going to be learning to drive all over again, but.
There are three in contention right now.
One is a pretty ok truck, it's got some bits of body rust starting superficially by the back taillight and where the gooseneck trailer rails were attached through the bed. Engine sounds ok, frame looks good. It's cheap. I would maybe have this one for 7 years?
One is a low kms truck (210k). It has flaky rust on leaf springs and coils. It has a perfectly nonrusty bed and a beautiful canopy and the engine actually just made me smile to listen to and to drive. I'm not sure I've had that experience before? It was a purr. This one would likely need some suspension work to make it to 10 years but should be fine otherwise.
One has heated leather seats and is too far for me to look at it. The other two have the transmission cooling haul system and airbag suspension; this one has an aftermarket heavy leaf-spring suspension. I'm considering getting it inspected by the local mechanic there that everyone in the toyota community recommends. No canopy, "surface rust", higher kms (290k). The heated seats on my 4runner make my bones stop hurting and it would be nice to keep that.
I have a broad, nonserious information-gathering part of my decision process where I basically accept all options. Then I slowly eliminate options. Before the actual point of decision it's uncomfortable where I just need a little more info than I have. I'm in that spot right now.
I get very, very attached to my vehicles. This is kind of like dating and preparing for a breakup at the same time. There are little licks of excitement and potential plus gloom and "nothing's gonna be as nice as the one I have now".
Then one morning I'll wake up and have decided and can start bonding and grieving.
I've been using the 4runner and a trailer for awhile but it's been challenging: I need to know when I'll need it, I can't pick up feed or something on the way home unless I bring and park and haul the trailer all day. I've been getting the grocery store food in the 4runner with the seats down and that sucks, honestly. It's bad for the vehicle even with cardboard down, stuff doesn't fit well. Problematic. So it's time for a truck.
I've decided on a 2nd gen Toyota Tundra with the 5.7L engine. They're a solid truck and they shouldn't blow up after 200-300k. The engine is the same fuel efficiency as my 4runner's current 4.7L but can offer more horsepower which means I can tow real weight if I need. After a trip to try some out, I've decided on a longbox (8' box). This is definitely going to be learning to drive all over again, but.
There are three in contention right now.
One is a pretty ok truck, it's got some bits of body rust starting superficially by the back taillight and where the gooseneck trailer rails were attached through the bed. Engine sounds ok, frame looks good. It's cheap. I would maybe have this one for 7 years?
One is a low kms truck (210k). It has flaky rust on leaf springs and coils. It has a perfectly nonrusty bed and a beautiful canopy and the engine actually just made me smile to listen to and to drive. I'm not sure I've had that experience before? It was a purr. This one would likely need some suspension work to make it to 10 years but should be fine otherwise.
One has heated leather seats and is too far for me to look at it. The other two have the transmission cooling haul system and airbag suspension; this one has an aftermarket heavy leaf-spring suspension. I'm considering getting it inspected by the local mechanic there that everyone in the toyota community recommends. No canopy, "surface rust", higher kms (290k). The heated seats on my 4runner make my bones stop hurting and it would be nice to keep that.
I have a broad, nonserious information-gathering part of my decision process where I basically accept all options. Then I slowly eliminate options. Before the actual point of decision it's uncomfortable where I just need a little more info than I have. I'm in that spot right now.
I get very, very attached to my vehicles. This is kind of like dating and preparing for a breakup at the same time. There are little licks of excitement and potential plus gloom and "nothing's gonna be as nice as the one I have now".
Then one morning I'll wake up and have decided and can start bonding and grieving.
Decision-making structure
Oct. 12th, 2021 09:54 amI'm buying a truck.
I've been using the 4runner and a trailer for awhile but it's been challenging: I need to know when I'll need it, I can't pick up feed or something on the way home unless I bring and park and haul the trailer all day. I've been getting the grocery store food in the 4runner with the seats down and that sucks, honestly. It's bad for the vehicle even with cardboard down, stuff doesn't fit well. Problematic. So it's time for a truck.
I've decided on a 2nd gen Toyota Tundra with the 5.7L engine. They're a solid truck and they shouldn't blow up after 200-300k. The engine is the same fuel efficiency as my 4runner's current 4.7L but can offer more horsepower which means I can tow real weight if I need. After a trip to try some out, I've decided on a longbox (8' box). This is definitely going to be learning to drive all over again, but.
There are three in contention right now.
One is a pretty ok truck, it's got some bits of body rust starting superficially by the back taillight and where the gooseneck trailer rails were attached through the bed. Engine sounds ok, frame looks good. It's cheap. I would maybe have this one for 7 years?
One is a low kms truck (210k). It has flaky rust on leaf springs and coils. It has a perfectly nonrusty bed and a beautiful canopy and the engine actually just made me smile to listen to and to drive. I'm not sure I've had that experience before? It was a purr. This one would likely need some suspension work to make it to 10 years but should be fine otherwise.
One has heated leather seats and is too far for me to look at it. The other two have the transmission cooling haul system and airbag suspension; this one has an aftermarket heavy leaf-spring suspension. I'm considering getting it inspected by the local mechanic there that everyone in the toyota community recommends. No canopy, "surface rust", higher kms (290k). The heated seats on my 4runner make my bones stop hurting and it would be nice to keep that.
I have a broad, nonserious information-gathering part of my decision process where I basically accept all options. Then I slowly eliminate options. Before the actual point of decision it's uncomfortable where I just need a little more info than I have. I'm in that spot right now.
I get very, very attached to my vehicles. This is kind of like dating and preparing for a breakup at the same time. There are little licks of excitement and potential plus gloom and "nothing's gonna be as nice as the one I have now".
Then one morning I'll wake up and have decided and can start bonding and grieving.
I've been using the 4runner and a trailer for awhile but it's been challenging: I need to know when I'll need it, I can't pick up feed or something on the way home unless I bring and park and haul the trailer all day. I've been getting the grocery store food in the 4runner with the seats down and that sucks, honestly. It's bad for the vehicle even with cardboard down, stuff doesn't fit well. Problematic. So it's time for a truck.
I've decided on a 2nd gen Toyota Tundra with the 5.7L engine. They're a solid truck and they shouldn't blow up after 200-300k. The engine is the same fuel efficiency as my 4runner's current 4.7L but can offer more horsepower which means I can tow real weight if I need. After a trip to try some out, I've decided on a longbox (8' box). This is definitely going to be learning to drive all over again, but.
There are three in contention right now.
One is a pretty ok truck, it's got some bits of body rust starting superficially by the back taillight and where the gooseneck trailer rails were attached through the bed. Engine sounds ok, frame looks good. It's cheap. I would maybe have this one for 7 years?
One is a low kms truck (210k). It has flaky rust on leaf springs and coils. It has a perfectly nonrusty bed and a beautiful canopy and the engine actually just made me smile to listen to and to drive. I'm not sure I've had that experience before? It was a purr. This one would likely need some suspension work to make it to 10 years but should be fine otherwise.
One has heated leather seats and is too far for me to look at it. The other two have the transmission cooling haul system and airbag suspension; this one has an aftermarket heavy leaf-spring suspension. I'm considering getting it inspected by the local mechanic there that everyone in the toyota community recommends. No canopy, "surface rust", higher kms (290k). The heated seats on my 4runner make my bones stop hurting and it would be nice to keep that.
I have a broad, nonserious information-gathering part of my decision process where I basically accept all options. Then I slowly eliminate options. Before the actual point of decision it's uncomfortable where I just need a little more info than I have. I'm in that spot right now.
I get very, very attached to my vehicles. This is kind of like dating and preparing for a breakup at the same time. There are little licks of excitement and potential plus gloom and "nothing's gonna be as nice as the one I have now".
Then one morning I'll wake up and have decided and can start bonding and grieving.
