More consumer stuff

I bought a hard-surface vacuum! I ended up getting the Dirt Devil Accucharge, and so far it is great. My favorite part about it is that IT HAS NO CORD, so you can take it anywhere, like in the pantry and close the door. When's the last time you vacuumed behind doors? For me, that was never, because the cord always got stuck or wasn't long enough and it was a royal pain. Now, I can vacuum my whole first floor with ease. And this particular vacuum held the charge for the whole cleaning, although it was dying a slow wheezy death at the end. I'm hopeful that the next charge will last longer (since I might have cheated a little on the first charge just so I could turn the thing on and make sure the noise wasn't going to kill me, which it did not). Next researching job: carpet vacuum. Anyone have one they love? Hate?

We also went car-shopping again yesterday. Joy. We drove the Hyundai Veracruz and the Chevy Traverse. Tim also drove the Acura MDX. I avoided driving it because it is way out of our price range and I didn't want to see the model house and have to buy the starter one, you know? Plus, I am pretty sure I drove one a little over a year ago, and fell in lurve with it.

Hyundai: not that memorable. The warranties are crazy good (one of them is 10 years, one is 5 and one is 3, I think, and you get all of them on your new vehicle), but the car itself doesn't stick out in my mind. It drove fine, had a good turning radius, was comfy, and the back row was fairly easy to access. It drove sort of like a truck, and I felt that the road noise was significant (possibly because I started out in the 3rd row, where it was very apparent).

Chevy: meh. I didn't like it that much. Tim liked it a lot, but he just rode as a passenger in the back and didn't drive it. For me, it was very squirrelly. I felt like we were driving in high winds, when the weather was pretty calm outside. Also, the heater/radio/accessory controls killed me. They were totally not intuitive at all; why would a car manufacturer do that? Why make things more complicated? Tim has told me about how they changed a couple of things from the old A-10 to the A-10C, and now you have to press 9 buttons to get the airplane to do something it used to take one button push to do...and that is what I thought of when I looked at the dash. When Claire and I were in the second row together, she pushed a button on the center console and turned the heat on full-blast. It took me nearly an entire minute to figure out how to turn it off. In the meantime, I accidentally turned on the radio (from the backseat! I hope the driver can disable that feature!). So, I'm pretty sure we will not be purchasing a Traverse.