Well, I'm getting the new car tomorrow. Barring another last minute hold-up. The whole disaster has been so aggravating that I'm not much excited, but I suppose actually having the Honda will engender that. When I'm not worrying about the payments. Which I can make. Did I mention we're getting a raise sometime this month?

But I just got back from cleaning out the Truck Amuck for the last time. Took out every last trace of 11 years of occupation. Armor-All'ed it all over inside. Washed it and even got a good bit of the gunk on the hood off. Vacuumed it. It looks like a hell of a lot more than $500 worth, in my own biased opinion. Came home and took pictures of it.

I'm told this kind of sentimentality is normal. My mother last year felt much the same when she traded in her 1993 Sentra. Which she bought brand new. 200,000+ miles ago.

I've become so used to manual transmission now that most of the time I don't remember that I didn't always know how to drive with it. Yet when I bought this truck, I couldn't drive it. I didn't know how. But frustration is the mother of invention, and once my fury at Aaron got me in the driver's seat and down the hill in North Chattanooga, I've never looked back. It's like I always knew how.

For 11 years I've been able to change stations on the radio without looking.

For 11 years I've put up with the windshield wipers coming on whenever they want, and the squirters whenever they want, and the door dinger dinging merrily away from here to Huntsville and back.

For 11 years I've had a truck that demanded little in the way of maintenance or repair, yet consistently got 25 miles to the gallon.

It hasn't seemed that long.

In a month I'll be singing the praises of the Honda, but tonight I feel like shit because I'm turning my back on an old friend. God, what am I doing?