09 10 08 10:52 |No comments yet Redirecting faith

It happens to us all the time. Chrissy and I will sit down to go over our calendars, budgets, and plans; and we're quickly distracted by the cats, the neighbors, Evan Williams, or our dinner simmering on the stove. Our serious conversations often leave us both laughing our asses off and hi-5ing to something totally unrelated. It was in the middle of one of these serious 'watch lenny (cat number 2) fetch the tinsel pipe cleaner' sessions that we decided to sell our only car. See, year ago we traded in our 2004 red VW Golf 2 door for a grey/green 2007 VW Rabbit 4 door. It made sense at the time because Chrissy was driving a lot with her architectural preservation job and needed room for her army of Makita tools and long underwear. The Rabbit is a great car, our dream car actually. Good mileage, parks anywhere, sunroof and lots of cupholders. But we weren't really using it all that much. We drove the car a dozen times in July, maybe 20 times in August. With the loan payment, insurance and fuel that's a lot  to spend for so little return. So after a few more flicks of the pipe cleaner and Lenny careening off everything in the living room, I walked outside, took a few shots of the car and put it on Craig'sList. One week later the car is gone! Sold to a great couple in the Metro-Atlanta area. We're now two thousand some-odd pounds lighter and happier. Feels like a huge german engineered weight has been lifted from our minds. We've invested in a new bicycle tire pump and have joined Philly Car Share for our longer trips outside the city.It was an amazingly easy, albeit psychically stressful, transaction. The stress comes from this intimate dance of trust that has to be tangoed by the two participants in any online transaction. Especially through Craig'sList where there is not eBay's Karma-esque 'Score' to be worried about or any sort of protection or accountability. Do these people exist? Does their bank exist? How can we verify that an out of state bank isn't just a website and a phone in a hotel room? Turns out we can't and we just had to go with it. But it all worked out well. +1 points for all parties involved.

Selling the car is right in line with a trend of thinking that started when we moved back to Philadelphia in 2006. We used a moving compay to get us back here from Detroit and we were billed by the pound for their services. We weighed over 18,000 pounds. So during the unpacking process and continuing until today we have been tossing, selling and trading everything that we don't use regularly. From sporting goods (don't have a Subaru anymore, don't need the Subaru bike rack) to musical equipment, to air conditioners, to computers, to all manner of gadget and doo-dad. Chrissy and I are not vegans, we're not tree huggers, or greenpeace rabble rousers, but it does feel great to be lighter. To take up less space, have a smaller footprint. I'll be writing a bit about the car share experience as soon as our keys arrive. We'll fobs actually, as the cars have the keys inside them. And credit cards for gas inside them, as gas is included in the hourly use rate. Again a karmic quandary, Car Share. Will the car be returned on time and gassed up by the last driver? 

Oh, and Sarah Palin might be one of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse.