295 Days Later: A Prius

Today I took delivery of my new 2005 Toyota Prius. This replaces my 2001 Prius, which I traded in at 99,617 miles (if I remember correctly). I am thrilled with this new car.

Of course, I was very happy with my first Prius, which was one of the first to arrive here in Delaware. In that car, I averaged about 48 miles per gallon. It was comfortable, fun to drive, and had enough gee-whiz geekery to satisfy my techie soul.

This car promises to be even more fun. I've only driven about 100 miles in it, so far, but here are some first thoughts.

It's bigger and "stouter" than the 2001 Prius. It is somehow more solid-feeling than the '01. I had heard that this was a bigger more powerful car that got even better mileage. We'll see about the mileage; today was a very wet and windy day, so I would expect lower mileage results. My average today seemed to be about 47 MPG, so I have high hopes.

This car is very comfortable and seems a tad roomier. The girls were pleased with the back seat and reported that they had more room as well. The "Smart Key" is very cool. It's a key fob that I can simply leave in pocket. When I approach the car, the car reads a signal from the key and the door unlocks; when I get in, I can leave the key in my pocket and simply press the "start" button. Very cool.

I had hoped to post a photo, but today was too gray and rainy. I'll take a snapshot when the sun returns and add it in.

I placed the order for this car on January 14, 2004. I took delivery today, November 4. That's 295 days. Or, 10 months and 3 weeks (I think). That's a long wait, but appears to be the norm for ordering the Prius these days. With my first Prius, I think I ordered in November of 2000 and had the car by the end of March 2001.

That earlier version of the Prius was a hit. This version, which was a new redesign starting with the 2004 model is an improvement and it has been very popular. The wait is not likely to shrink. The dealer told me that many folks waiting for their Priuses to come in are getting antsy and a little upset with their dealers. He was grateful that I'd been so patient.

This is a nice treat. It's been a disappointing week otherwise, and I have been looking forward to having this car. Tonight, I'm starting to feel happy again.

Harmonic Personal Convergence on West Wing

This evening's episode of The West Wing featured a story line which neatly encapsulates two of my current interests -- weblogs and the Toyota Prius.

In this episode, as the West Wing web site notes, "Josh (Bradley Whitford) test drives an oversized SUV and crashes into a hybrid car resulting in bad publicity for The White House." What does he hit? A Toyota Prius.

The episode starts with Josh car-shopping and discussing the Prius with a salesman. I was interested to note that this (fictional) dealer admits to marking-up the cost of the car by several thousand dollars and justifies this by pointing out that other dealers are jacking-up the price even more. I'm fairly sure that my dealer (CF Schwartz, Dover, DE) resisted that temptation. I was also amused at the notion of only an eight month waiting list; my wait was almost eleven months.

There was much discussion of the possible motives for buying a Prius -- environmental holier-than-thou-ism, monetary economy tied to fuel economy, "striking a blow" . . . For me it's more simple. The Prius is a cool car, with lots of hi-tech fun built-in. It was cool in 2001 when I bought my first; it is even more cool now.

The story line continues with Josh running afoul of a fictional Capital Hill gossip blog that takes up the issue. I think that blog was likely based on Wonkette, the tart DC blog that has become a cultural icon of late. Like the real bloggeur, the author of the West Wing version is also a woman.
This all got me thinking: there must be some Prius Blogs out there. And there are, but only a few. There are plenty of blog posts about the Prius.

New Wheels. No, Not a Hybrid

I've bought a new car, a Scion xD. We've become a three-driver family this summer and so now have a third car. This will be my car, and it is not a hybrid; that is a major change for me.

I've driven Toyota Prius hybrids for most of the present century. My first was a 2001, the first version that was available in the US. I was, I think, the second or third to have a Prius in Delaware. I replaced that with a second generation Prius in 2004.

I love our 2005 Prius, it is a roomy, comfortable, efficient and clean car. But we are at a point where we need a car for our daughter to drive. We could have found her a used car at one of the dealerships, and we looked a bit. But I didn't really want to buy a used car (my personal bias, I guess). And, if I'm going to buy a new car, it won't be for the young driver; it's going to be for me. We recently replaced Karen's car, by the way.

So I started looking for a small, efficient, and inexpensive car for my commute. I did some research, test-drove a few models, and settled on the Scion. It presents a nice balance between efficiency and features. The Scion is a sporty little thing but you sit up fairly high, which I like. The styling is sharp; a colleague described the front view today as like a Japanese anime character. I can see that.

I'm pleased with the stereo and its integration of both satellite radio and the Ipod. I think this will be a nice place to spend my commute.

I'm a bit sad that there isn't a new version of the Prius, or something even cooler, ready for me to buy this year. I like having cutting edge cars and now that so many Priuses are on the road I feel a bit overtaken (of course, it is a good thing to have more hybrids out there).

Why can't I have an all-electric car, with a big battery, lots of energy recapture technology (regenerative breaking and such) and a skin made up entirely of photovoltaic cells? I don't need hydrogen, thanks, and I'm ready to start ending my dependence on oil (not "foreign oil," mind you, all oil).

I'm here, I'm not queer, but I do like to buy cars. Who will sell me my real e-car? Anyone? No? I guess I'll have to wait. I'm happy to play in my little blue Scion for now.

Prius' Progress

I reached 80,000 miles on my 2005 Toyota Prius this evening. The blink-over conveniently came just as I was pulling up to the 5-Points traffic light to make the left from Route 1 to Savannah Road.

It's been 42 days since my last milestone report, on June 20, when I passed 77,777 miles. That blog post sparked a discussion of my commuting habits.

I calculated then that I had averaged nearly 87 miles per day in the Prius over the 4 months between 66,666 and 77,777. Today I calculate that I've averaged almost 53 miles each day since June 20. I should note, though, that for two full weeks, while we were up north, the Prius sat quietly in the garage.

By the way, I've taken enough of these odometer-graphs now to create a Prius' Progress flickr set. I'm so proud.

Pimping My Prius

Yesterday I added a Sirius satellite radio receiver to my Prius. It was an anniversary gift from Miss Karen, though I did the research on which satellite radio system to go with and which receiver to use.

I choose Sirius over XM based largely on Sirius’ programming content. They had more NPR and other public radio choices and they had more of the sort of “hippy music” and folk music that I like.

I do regret that Sirius doesn’t have the same access to baseball games that XM has. Sirius sells on having broadcasts of every NFL game. XM sells on access to all baseball games. To me, baseball is a great game to listen to while driving; football doesn’t work so well on radio. In the end, however, music and news were the deciding factors.

I went with a receiver from Factory Interactive that installs permanently in the car and uses the Prius’ in-dash touch-screen as an interface. Many folks like the portable units, which can be hooked up to radios in several cars and in the home. That’s a cost effective way to go, but I understand that you make a slight sacrifice in sound quality. I like the idea of having a system that works as an integral part of my car’s sound system. The mounting hardware of the portables also might be a problem. In practice, at home I use my laptop and the web to access music; at work it’s not an issue. Eventually, I may look into a portable – or another installed system – for the van. But that is a decision to make after living with satellite radio for a while, to see if we really want to go in this direction for the long haul.

Installing the unit was an interesting challenge. It ate up all of Saturday morning. The unit came with written directions and a DVD containing a step-by-step how-to video. I watched that video all the way through back at the start of the week when the radio first arrived. Yesterday, I put the laptop on a chair in the garage and followed it faithfully, step by step.

I would watch the fellow on the video – Jon – take the first step, hit pause, and go do that step on my car. Then back to the laptop for the next step. In some cases I would stop what I was doing and go back to watch again. Better safe, and slow, then sorry.

The interior construction of the Prius is fascinating. The dashboard comes apart in sections, each held in with pressure clips and, in a few cases, a few screws. Bits just “pop out.” Wires plug in. Everything fits together.

For an experienced person, the installation probably takes less than an hour. For those comfortable taking their car apart, a first time installation would probably take an hour and a half. I am a beginner. I was careful. I took three hours.

I had thought about photographing some of the steps, and posting shots of the interior of my car. Doing the installation, though, was challenge enough.

So far (I’ve only made a few short drives), I’m happy with what I’ve heard. The folk channel gave me some tasty Dylan covers yesterday evening, vintage Arlo Guthrie, and several of the new artists that I like but who I rarely hear on broadcast radio, especially here in southern Delaware. I switched over to the Jam-Band channel at one point and hit on a nice, live, acoustic version of El Paso, by the Dead.

This will work.

2007 on Mike's Musings

2007 was the first full year for which I tracked traffic on this blog using Google Analytics. Well, most of the year. There were two brief periods, totaling about a week, when I had made template changes and forgot to re-install the Analytics code. But I think I have enough data to take a look at activity for the year.

There were 8,103 unique visitors, who stopped by 14,773 times and viewed 29,576 different pages. My busiest day for the year was September 14, with September 13 a close second. Based partly on data about individual page-views and Google search terms, I think that those dates were busiest because of several posts in the first part of September:

• Fifty Years Ago Today, in which I looked back at desegregation;
• Looks Like I'll Have to Make Friends With a Lawyer/Author from California, one of several posts this past year about lighthouses being sold;
• At The 29th Annual Bethany Beach Boardwalk Arts Festival, which featured the works of at least one popular artisan and touched on the contentious Delaware off-shore wind-farm proposal; and,
• We Have Met the Enemy and He is Those People, in which I took my own neighbors to task for their desire to wall-off our subdivision from a new one next door.

There was a lot going on just then.

Over the full year, a large majority of readers simply came to the blog's front page and read what-ever was newest. But there were a number of pages, some from several years ago, that continued to attract readers. Here are the top five:

• Pimping My Prius, from September of 2005, is about installing a Sirius Satellite Radio receiver in the Prius. This page was viewed 918 times in 2007. It has long been the most-viewed archive page.
• A Restaurant Recommendation Chain-Post, from May of 2007, is one of the few "memes" I have ever taken part in. By design, this meme carries links back to all participants and that chain of posts garnered 166 page-views in 2007.
• Hey! A Gravity-Monument Photo!, from May of 2005, also had 166 page-views in 2007. Anyone who has ever run across one of these puzzlers is bound to do a bit of Googling and that can lead to this page. There's also a link to it from TutorGig.Com's page on the Gravity Research Foundation.
• An Albino Deer? Or An Echo From the Distant Past?, from January of 2007, is about a white deer I spotted at Cape Henlopen State Park but also mentions a legend about a white deer from the Lenape people who once lived in this area. I've noticed lots of "white deer" searches over the years. This page had 147 page-views in 2007.
• Now, Here's a Surprise, from August of 2005, concerns my experience with a blood clot hat summer. This one gets many visits from folks searching for information on blood clots. I hope it helps people who stop by; it had 144 visits in 2007.
  

Search engines generated many visitors to Mike's Musings in 2007, but not the majority. Almost 53% percent of visits came through links from other sites, including Delaware On-line, Blogger (likely the risky "next-blog" link), several other Delaware bloggers (Delaware Liberal, TommyWonk, WGMD, and Down With Absolutes top that list), and (interestingly) via the link in my e-mail signature line.

A bit more than 32% of traffic to the site this past year came through search engines. Many were searching for "Mike Mahaffie" or for "Mike's Musings." Other popular searches were for combinations of sirius and prius and satellite, "how to get rid of a blood clot," and the Woods of Mahaffie.

About 15% of visitors were from "direct traffic," meaning people have bookmarked me (how nice) and checked back in (even nicer).

Most of my readers are from the United States though there were a good number of visitors from Canada, the UK, Ireland and Australia and many non-English-speaking countries. Within the US, most visitors checked in from within Delaware and surrounding states. But I am pleased to see that I had visitors from every state, though only 3 from North Dakota.

I'll have to work up some North Dakota-specific content and try to target a Roughrider audience in 2007.

Two Good Ideas in One in Wilmington

The City of Wilmington is starting a pilot program to reduce the number of cars in their "city car" inventory and to reduce the environmental impact of those cars that city employees do drive.

According to a story in the News Journal yesterday, the city will replace a number of the cars in its fleet with hybrid ride-share vehicles. They'll use cars from PhillyCarShare, one of a number of ride-sharing businesses that have popped up in cities in the last few years. My eye is always drawn to the ZipCar ads when I ride the Washington Metro.

It's not an approach to transportation that is likely to work where I live (small-town, long commute), but if I ever get myself settled in a city somewhere, I'll hope to take part in a ride-share program.

I think this makes great sense for government agencies in which staff don't have to have a car or truck available on-call at all times. Most of us government workers can plan any trips we must make far enough in advance that shared transportation works well.

The other part of this story, of course, touches close to home. For six years now I've been a proud Prius driver. And I take this opportunity to repeat that it is not to save money on gasoline that I drive a Prius; I want to reduce the emissions I cause. My Prius helps me do that.

Can I Have One? Please?

Here's what greeted me when I left my office building at lunch today: a purple, three-wheeled, all-electric vehicle. I had to check it out.

The Myers Motors NmG is technically a motorcycle, but drives like a car. It is said to have a range of around 30 miles and an ability to go up to 70 miles per hour. NmG? Stands for "No More Gas."

The car was in Dover, visiting from its home in Ohio for a meeting of the Governor's Energy Advisory Council. They wanted hear a bit more about it, apparently.

Poking around on-line this evening, I find that the NmG is a resurrection of the Corbin Motors Sparrow. A few hundred were built out in California in the early part of this century, but company didn't make it.

Now, apparently sensing a renewed market opportunity, the Myers folks have bought out the Sparrow and redesigned/re-designated it as the NmG.

This thing looks very cool. It is a single-seater, but looks comfortable and has a cargo capacity of one shopping cart-full. I was intrigued by a set of golf-ball-style dimples on the backs of the front wheel covers and on the back of the vehicle itself. I assume they perform some aerodynamic function.

A range of 30 miles is not quite enough for my life in Delaware, but if I lived and worked in the same city, I can see this as a perfect commute-car. I can also see it as a courier car in a city.

I am tempted, though.

I've long wanted an electric car. I bought my first gas/electric hybrid Prius in 2001. I'm now on my second Prius.

I love my Prius, but there's still a spot in my imagination for a completely electric vehicle.

Happy Blogsday, To Me

It was two years ago today that I started this Mike's Musings. When I set off on my narcissistic journey, I wasn't sure where it would lead. I'm still not sure, but I'm having fun with it, so I think I will carry on.

Last year at this time, I took a look back and found a variety of topics and styles of posting. I wonder if I've settled into any one in the year since then?

I do think I have become somewhat less political, at least on this blog. Over this past year, several overtly political blogs have babbled up in the Delaware blogosphere. While I enjoy politics,and have strong feelings about them, I've come to think that those feelings may not be the best thing for me to post about here; not least because I have made a conscious decision to be openly me on-line.

Also, there are others on both sides of the spectrum -- left and right -- who do a more complete job of plumbing the political depths than I could or would.

So, I have continued to catalogue my daily experiences and have moved more and more into photography.

I have also started playing with various forms of blog-metrics and I have been interested to note what some of my most popular blog entries have been this past year.

My experiences last fall with a blood clot, and its treatment, for example, have turned up repeatedly as entries that new readers have found.

Even more frequently read has been my entry on adding a Sirius Satellite radio to my Prius. I get a steady stream of hits from google searches like "sirius prius" or "sirius for prius."

One foray into local school board politics, at least as an observer, has also generated some traffic. We had some worries in the winter about the intentions of the Indian River School Board towards our daughters' school. I also found time to cover the legal questions around the District's handling of religion and diversity.

Some Other Favorites From the Past Year

• A trip to Niagara Falls
• A Theory of Relative Coolness
• Two Concert Posts: John Mayer and John Mayer/Sheryl Crow
• Delaware's Own Punkin' Chunkin' is Now and International Story
  
• Arts in Education in the News
• A Walk Around the Point
• Oh, How I Love That Crazy Internet
• Report from the Keys, Part 2: Being There
• Returning to an Old Favorite
  
• Music. Two Very Different Sorts.
  
• Vacation Report, Part 3: At The Tyler Place
• Imagine My Surprise

Finally, I've been playing around with some new technologies, new blog tools. I've been trying out different aspects of del.icio.us, for example, to enhance my blog-roll and add a new tag-roll. This is my test-bed for some of the sorts of social networking tools I'd like to bring to my web work at work. We shall see.

It has been fun writing this blog for the last two years. I think I'll dish up some Ice Cream and toast to the future.

Filed in:

• Blogging

It Really is a Small World

The other day I stumbled across an AP story on the Chicago Sun-Times web site that represents one of those odd intersections of interest and personal history.

The story -- Tax breaks rolled out for hybrid-car buyers -- is from January 1 of this year. It is about the new tax breaks for hybrid cars, including the Prius, which I drive.

I found it when I was reviewing Performancing statistics on my blog. I like to see what web-searches have led people to my site.

In this case, I noted that someone had found me by searching Google for John Krivit. That's the name of one of the members of my rock band in high school. That search led someone to an entry I had written back in 2004 about Googling for my old friends from The Ramblin' Beach Guys (RBGs).

Just below that on the search results was a link to the AP story about the Prius tax break. John Krivit is quoted as a Prius owner, which is a fine coincidence. What really freaked me, though, was that the story is by John Heilprin, our old drummer.

Now It's Half Way

I rolled 50,000 miles in my Prius on my commute home the other day. I was just coming into Five Points and was able to take this photo while waiting in the left-turn lane to head towards Lewes.

I figure I'll keep this car until just before I hit 100,000 miles. It has taken me about 20 months to roll 50,000. Next Prius in 2008?

This mileage stone isn't as fun as when I hit 22,222 or 44,444, but worth noting anyway.

This View of Hybrids Bugs Me

There's a story on hybrid cars in the Business section of today's News Journal. The article -- Can hybrid cars really save you money? -- takes the line that most of these articles have seemed to take lately. That is, now that gas prices are rising, are hybrids really a good way to save money?

It's a valid question, but it ignores the main reason that I and many other early-adopters had for buying our hybrids: air quality. I love the higher mileage that my Prius gives me. I've long wanted a way to cut my personal use of a non-renewable energy source. But my chief concern was, and is, to reduce the amount of air pollution that I create. And my Prius does that quite well.

To be fair, this particular article does allow that the environmentalist angle remains valid, but it quickly goes back to busily debunking the notion of hybrids as a way to save money on gasoline.

That's fine, and may be a valid point (though I note that they focus mostly on the Honda hybrid), but I have to insist that gas mileage is not the main reason to own a hybrid.

I Used to Be Unique

A report from R. L. Polk & Co. confirms what I've been seeing out on the road:

Nationwide registrations for new hybrid vehicles rose to 199,148 in 2005 -- a 139 percent increase from 2004 according to R. L. Polk & Co. For the second year in a row, Toyota Prius led the segment commanding 52.6 percent of new registrations. However, with more models entering the market, hybrid share for any given vehicle is being challenged.

I used to be one of the only folks out there in a Prius. Lately, there are more and more of us. I don't mind; I think it's good to have more low emissions vehicles out there.

I do miss that sense of being special, though.

Another Way to Save Gas and Reduce Air Pollution Emissions

I've been looking for ways to off-set the effects of the larger amount of gasoline I'm burning now that I have shifted from a Prius to a Scion. I think I have found it in the state van-pool system.

As of August 6, I have become a member of a van-pool that runs between Five Points, about a mile and a half from my home, and downtown Dover. I don't expect to ride it every day, but I have been keeping track and find, so far, that I ride the van a bit more than three quarters of the time. (I'm curious to see whether or not the pie chart at right will update here as I enter new data in mycrocosm; adding it as a graphic here is partly an experiment)

UPDATE: The mycrocosm site has recently added the ability to post linked dynamic versions of these charts. I have replaced the old static version with the linked version at right. Though it is bigger, and technically dynamic, I am interested to note that the ratio of Car to Vanpool is just about what it was when I first posted this.

There are (I think) 14 members of this van-pool; we've never all been on the van at the same time, at least not in my brief experience. The members share a $525 monthly rental fee that covers the van, gas, roadside assistance and a guaranteed ride home (if something odd happens). A subset of members pay a bit less but share the driving chores. My cost is about $40 a month.

I have averaged 33.3 miles per gallon in the Scion over the first 1,488 miles I've driven. My cost, not counting oil and other maintenance, has averaged eleven cents a mile. My commute is about 80 miles round-trip. That costs me about $8.80 a day. Allowing a little leeway for the few miles I drive to the van-pool pick-up site, I figure that I've saved my monthly cost to take the van after the first five days I ride the van. The rest of the month is profit.

I'm also pleased to think that when eight or ten of us ride together it means 7 or nine fewer tailpipes adding to our air quality problem.

And I can read, or listen to music, or doze, or chat with my fellow passengers,

There is some irony, though. As a result of a reduction in the percentage of my driving time in the Scion that is highway driving, I'm seeing a slight drop in fuel mileage.

What Are You Looking For?

I have a few different ways to track visitors to this site. I'm not too obsessive about it, but I enjoy knowing what's brought people here.

Over the long term, I find I get a steady stream of people looking for information on getting rid of a blood clot. Installing satellite radio in a Prius is also popular as are Delaware's boundary monuments.

And I see seasonal patterns as well.

In the last two weeks, for example, there has been interest in the Fourth of July in Bethany Beach. Since June 22, fifty-eight of Mike's Musings visits were generated by web searches for some combination of Bethany Beach, Fourth of July, fireworks, and parade. That's 23.6 percent of all searches that led to the blog. ("Bethany Beach Fireworks" is the champ.)

There has also been a steady stream of visitors looking for information about the Tyler Place, in Vermont. I've posted reports from there the last several summers, and they are being found by folks researching their own trips, it seems.

We've stopped visiting the Tyler Place, but not because we don't love it. After nine summers, Colleen has aged-out of the Tyler kids' programs. It was time to make room for these other folks. I hope our reports and pictures help them get ready. But we do miss it terribly.

Among the Many Things I Did Not Know: Why 88888 is So Interesting

Back in November, I posted about rolling 88,888 miles on my Prius. I thought it was just a way-station on my journey of obsessive nerdiness, but that post has had something of a life of its own.

The folks over at Delaware Liberal used it to start a "Guess Mike's Mileage" contest. That was cute. But I've also noticed a steady stream of hits on that post generated by Google Searches for "88888." The most recent, today, was by a web-surfer in Chahārmahāl o Bakhtiyārī, in Iran.

I've noticed that a number of the 88888 searchers are in that part of the world, so I finally got curious enough to follow-up and found two interesting facts about 88888 that may explain why that number is bringing readers.

First, the number 88,888 is a mathematical curiosity:

888888 is the only five-digit repunit such that the product of itself and all truncations of itself plus and minus one results in twin primes.

What? Don't ask me, I just work here. In any case, I've seen 88,888 referred to in several places as a lucky number. These two things are likely related.

More recently, 88888 is apparently the account number used by Nick Leeson for the speculative trades that led to the collapse of the UK investment bank Barings in the 1990s.

I just thought it was neat that my car's odometer had 8's straight across.

Three Tens on a Black Screen

I was waiting for this point in the life of my Prius. I reached 101,010 miles on my odometer on the way into work this morning. The way the number "1" works in the digital read-out adds this once every 10, 1000, and 100000 miles spacing that I find cute.

It really doesn't take much to make me a happy man.

99,999 ... and ... 100,000

I reached 99,999 miles on my 2005 Prius this morning at about 7:20 and just south of the St. Jones River on my way into Dover. I pulled over to take the traditional odometer-graph.

I have to say that I am most impressed with RSmitty, who predicted that I'd hit 99,999 on this very date in the Fun for Math Heads contest on Delaware Liberal back in November. There's no mention there of a prize, but we should all now do that polite little clapping noise your hear in golf broadcasts.

RSmitty used the data about miles per day that I've been tossing into these mileage posts to calculate his remarkable estimate. So here's the updated data: it took me 130 days to drive the 11,111 miles between 88,888 and 99,999. That's 85.5 miles per day, on average. It had been 145 days between 77,777 and 88,888.

I was so pleased with reaching this milestone that I immediately set out to reach 100,000 miles. By carefully driving another mile over the next few minutes, I was able to bring up a sixth digit on my odometer.

So. What should the next milestone be? An additional 11,111 miles from 99,999 would be 111,110 and my particular mania would insist on 111,111. On the other hand, I think 101,010 would look really cool given the way my odometer forms numbers. Based on what it looked like at 91,088, I think it would say "10 10 10."

Minor Observation #527

I think I have finally figured out why some of the top pop hits of today grate so fearfully on my nerves. I'm a kind Dad and sometimes let my daughters listen to Hits One on the Sirius radio. Some of the tunes played are quite good. Some make me want to leap screaming from my moving Prius.

It's not just the overtly sexual lyrics which would have given me pause even when I was a horny 18-year-old. It's not just the unimaginative melodies and over-processed, faked-up singing. It's not even the deliberate "stoopid-ness" of the personae adopted by the performers.

No, what really makes me cringe is the fact that, of late, producers have been sampling heavily from the most over-played pop of the 1980s to build the music-montages over which their singers rap, croon or mumble. They've appropriated songs that were big hits at a time when pop music was at its most fake, unimaginative and tedious. And the songs they are (re)using were horribly over-played in the 1980s.

There was some good music produced in the 1980s. But it wasn't what made it as "pop hits." I still listen to some music from the 1980s. But I was sick of these hit songs 20 years ago. Adding new lyrics and beats hasn't helped.

88,888

I reached 88,888 miles in my Prius today. I was on my way home from dropping the girls off at the Sussex Dance Academy for a Nutcracker Ballet rehearsal.

It has been 145 days since I reached 77,777 miles, back in June. I averaged more than 76 miles each day over that stretch. I had calculated an average of almost 87 miles a day during the run from 66,666 to 77,777.

The difference, I think, is that the 4 months between the 6s and the 7s was all during the school year, when I do a lot of driving running the girls back and forth from dance classes in the evenings. About half of the nearly five months between the 7s and the 8s was in the summer, when I don't do quite as much girl-running.

And, yes, I do realize how sad it is for me to be so obsessed with this stuff. But I treasure my silly habits.