'tis my car's birthday today. it's technically not the day she was "born," but it was 5 years ago today that i bought her. she has treated me really well during this time. i have only replaced the struts, driver door skin (after a full-size van couldn't see her out of the rear-view), speakers, and an axle boot and added cruise and a cd player.

i realized last week how much i depend on her. i couldn't work at the job i do or have taken all of my weekend trips this summer (and all throughout college for that matter) without her. she has witnessed countless wonderful conversations that i've had with friends and listened to me vent to myself after a tough day.

in high school my friends would pile in and we'd drive around for hours every weekend. (this was usually the most exciting thing for us to do.) one saturday we decided to follow this one road until it ended. it was still light out when we reached it 1.5 hours later, so we decided to turn around and drive until we got to the other end. we finally gave up 3 or 4 hours later and drove back home. i'm lucky my car gets good gas mileage. :)

this summer i've realized how peaceful it is to drive her around aimlessly. i pick a road that i've always wondered where it ends up and start driving. it's amazing how much you can learn about a city this way.

if she ever got totalled, her passengers would most likely be totalled as well. so at least i don't have to worry about life without her! :) j/k...