Saturday morning, Anne labored mightily, trying to get Dan to church on time, for Bekah’s wedding. He made it and everything went off well. I should have taken a picture of him, because he looked pretty dapper in his new suit. Keeping with the wedding theme, we watched Kristen Wiig’s “Bridesmaids”. It is a comedy about women behaving badly, as counterpoint to the usual fare of men behaving badly. There were a few good laughs in the movie, sort of like an above average Saturday Night Live show, some hits, some misses. On the other hand, Melissa McCarthy as Megan owns every scene that she appears in.

Acting in my official capacity as one of Santa’s little elves, I spent all day slaving for a hot keyboard. No, I was not shopping online. I was being crafty. Anne and I did go shopping together for Thanksgiving dinner. I like to keep the idea of celebrating just one holiday at a time, but ordering long lead items requires some forethought. We’re planning a traditional turkey dinner. Traditional as in cooked in a conventional oven. No flash-frying, flamethrowers of other incendiary devices for us, don’t you know? We’ll have a traditional meal, with a suitable accoutrement of side dishes. By which I mean vegetables and I am not including pizza here, sorry Mr. Cain. We do not concur with the Debt of Education’s policy of leaving no child without a fat behind.

Today’s weather was horrible, a bone chilling 40 degree rainy day. We didn’t bike yesterday, when we had a chance to ride and today it always seemed to be raining, just finishing raining or just about to rain. I did manage to “fix” the front step yesterday, before the rain came. Plagued by crumbling concrete, I’ve repaired it before and likely will again, but the new Quick-crete patch should hold through the winter. The repair improves the curb appeal of the house some, but only completely new concrete will “fix” it.

Last week, the Institute for Highway Safety announced that occupants of hybrid vehicles suffer 25% less injuries then occupants of comparably sized conventional vehicles. This institute attributed this extra safety to the 10% extra weight that a hybrid vehicle carries around with it. The weight of a second motor and the battery packs adds up. Now, none of the news reports that I have read, said that hybrids had fewer accidents, just that when they did have an accident, the people inside it were safer.

The Prius has horrible rear visibility. Every driver, of any car, should always look behind them, when for example, changing lanes. Except with the Prius, I don’t think that that is enough. It has so many blind spots that its driver needs the situational awareness of an ace fighter pilot in a dogfight’s fur ball, just to change lanes on the highway. Balancing this defect, is the propensity of Prius drivers to play the mileage game. The Prius comes equipped with LCD displays. These displays give instantaneous feedback to the driver of their fuel economy. It is all to easy to fall into the mode of trying to maximize one’s mileage, especially on your regular commute, without regard to how this effects the other drivers on the road. At least in the Prius, if you get rear-ended, you’ll never see it coming.