A New Car!!

So, as some of you know, we finally got our car two weeks ago. It was of course extremely thrilling. We celebrated by tootling down to Liege so that I could give a paper at a conference (woo hoo!).

The following photo has nothing to do with our car, but was taken at this sad shopping centre in the middle of Liege where we went to the grocery store. They were putting on a really freaky Christmas show and I happened to have my camera (I don't bring it to London, or Vimy Ridge, but I remember it for the grimy, industrial town of Liege).


Anyway, I was stunned by how incredibly creepy this show was, with the prancing elf people and strange, loud, off-key singing. The man above is a chubby middle-aged Belgian, but there he is, near the food court, wearing a sort of metallic cone on his head, overly made up, and singing some fake "holiday" song that scrupulously makes no mention of Chirstmas. It kind of made me sad, but at the same time frightened... Like how I feel about the news that Britney's little sister is pregnant... I mean, is the whole world going to be populated by Spears-es? Those girls are FERTILE.

Ahem, I am digressing. The point of this post is to discuss our fabulous car. So here it is:

Look how pretty and red and shiny it is. Just like Santa's hat, or Rudolph's nose! Also, just a little FYI, but that very impressive building behind the car is the town hall for my neck of the woods. Pretty snazzy, huh?

This is the back view, from our underground parking spot. And your eyes aren't deceiving, you that's Andrew "Mad Max" Horrall in the driver's seat. He took us for a spin, yo and he's got killer driving skillz. (Killer as in good, not, you know, actual killer).

This is Andy looking smug after he has successfully navigated us through bizarro Belgian traffic, crazed roundabouts and a parallel parking job on his first attempt.

Pretty amazing for a man who has only learned to drive in the past year and is still figuring everything out.

I, on the other hand, have been driving for 15 years. You would imagine that thanks to my extensive experience I would not attempt to win a fight with the elevator jobby that brings our car down to our parking spot in the bowels of our apartment building.

You, would, however be wrong. I did this a mere three days after we got the car, and just to be clear those aren't adorable little smudges that can be wiped away, but deep GOUGES into the red paint. In my defense it's very tricky getting our giant car into the tiny Belgian elevator.

I tried to tell Andrew that having a new car was like getting a pair of new sneakers... You know, they're bright white and you need to scuff them up a bit to break them in.
I don't think he bought it.