Getting this started.

Since i'm moving away in less than 3 weeks, I decided that blogging would probably be the easiest way to keep my friends and parents informed as far as what I'm up to. I've never been to much of a diary keeper or writer, but maybe since blogs are so close to the computer I'll be able to keep up with it.

The latest escapade in my life has been car shopping. I'm pretty much hooked on the Mazda3 after test driving it and am in the process of trying to pick colors and options. The Nissan Sentra was my second favorite out of everything I drove, but once I found out I can knock $2500 off the price of a Mazda I was sold. The Mazdaspeed3 is such a hot/tempting car, but I suppose I'll keep my head on straight and put mileage higher on the priority list than horsepower (for now) -- so I think i'm going with the S model in the dark grey. It'll probably look like the ride below, but with a spoiler. My mom said it doesn't quite look right without the spoiler, and who am I to argue with my mom.

The next thing on my agenda lately has been insurance shopping. I plan on buying it about 10 days before I leave, so that I'm on my parents insurance "grace period" when I drive out to CT, but after that point insurance is going to be up to me. Getting old is pretty nuts, I never thought I'd be saying I'm "insurance shopping." FYI, Geico is ridiculously cheap. They were the only company besides Liberty Mutual that offered me any amount under $1000 for 6 months -- even with the higher coverage levels. I'll probably end up supporting Warren Buffet and the Gecko/Cavemen after all, god knows they spend enough money on advertising to warrant it.

In non-real-life (I suppose), I spent most of the last few weeks cooking and trying to pick up Ruby. Ruby really is a fascinating language -- it's syntactically nothing like anything else I've worked with. You really have to start thinking out of the box to even guess what the correct syntax to do anything would be. I suppose that goes to show that when the Japanese set out to do something it's always going to be completely off the wall. The learning curve is feeling pretty high, but I suppose I have to learn a scripting language sooner or later. I might as well go with the one that fascinates me the most.

As far as cooking goes, I finished off the last of my Chile Verde today. That's definitely a dish I'm going to want to perfect over time, it was one of my absolute favorites when I had it during spring break in LA. I think I added a bit too much cilantro and I want to play around with the different chiles you can put in it. I tried Anaheims, which definitely had a bite to them. I'm probably going to try pablano's next time just to see what they have to bring to the table. When I was reading about all the different types of chiles around Google I kept hearing about a hatch version from New Mexico. Knowing how much I love hot things it's probably only a matter of time before I order a bushel and go to town putting them in everything...