Deeinohio, thanks for the suggestions! Sorry you had such a bad experience, Dee. It's no fun to be stranded. Bumblebeez, thanks so much for sharing that. I appreciate it. Pesky, wow, you are quite informed about cars & auto service issues! That's wonderful. You make a lot of good points that I will keep in mind. Les! Yes! I just discovered what you are talking about last night, after I left GW. I did a Google search--"Blown gasket, Subaru Forester," thinking really, that a search that specific would yield me diddly squat. Guess what? It produced a full page of complaints, chat room discussions, & general angst about serious & frequent Subaru Forester head gasket issues! The 1999 Forester (& 2001) seem to be the most vulnerable to this. Amazing. Never heard anyone talk about this flaw in the system before, but it's evidently been a widespread occurence. Looks like Subaru has responded & NOW builds their Foresters with a completely different sort of head gasket, so newer Subi owners, don't despair! Thanks for sharing this, Les! Oakley, yes... I think so! Again, y'all have been fantastic. So many good points have been raised & I feel so much better about this situation. Armed with your feedback, when I call the service dept. Manager this morning, I will feel confident to inquire about & dig a little deeper into the diagnosis. Also, here is one of (The Many) links about the horrors of Subaru Forester gaskets! It's from a chatroom discussion & the last poster suggests getting a written guarantee on the work. Not a bad idea, either. Here is a link that might be useful: A tisket a tasket, I think I blew my gasket...

Thanks for the input! I drove a 2010 Forester (liked it--the base model, no bells and whistles: even heated seats don't rock my world!) and an Impreza (really liked that). Decided that I really don't need the heft of the Forester if I can get all-wheel-drive in the Impreza. (D.C.-area snow, if you factor OUT this past winter, is not horrendous! Did you venture to these parts this winter, Stinky?) Still crunching numbers. The 2011 Imprezas are in (or just in) to showrooms, so no real bargaining power there yet. Because my insurance costs will double pretty much with any car I get (my car is old!), I might try to push my current one a bit longer. In the meantime, I get to test-drive other cars and compare them to the Subaru. And I didn't even have the Impreza in mind when I went to Subaru--I just went to see the Forester! So I had done no research on it. But Consumers rates it higher than other similar models.

John Holmes Quotes American - Poet January 6, 1904 - June 22, 1962 To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry. John Holmes It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. John Holmes Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war. John Holmes Every genuine boy is a rebel and an anarch. If he were allowed to develop according to his own instincts, his own inclinations, society would undergo such a radical transformation as to make the adult revolutionary cower and cringe. John Holmes Joey Adams Quotes American - Comedian January 6, 1911 - December 2, 1999 Do not worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older it will avoid you. Joey Adams Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you. Joey Adams If it weren't for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn't get any exercise at all. Joey Adams Rockefeller once explained the secret of success. 'Get up early, work late - and strike oil.' Joey Adams The difference between playing the stock market and the horses is that one of the horses must win. Joey Adams Marriage is give and take. You'd better give it to her or she'll take it anyway. Joey Adams A psychiatrist asks a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing. Joey Adams If you break 100, watch your golf. If you break 80, watch your business. Joey Adams People are still willing to do an honest day's work. The trouble is they want a week's pay for it. Joey Adams Jacques Ellul Quotes French - Philosopher January 6, 1912 - May 19, 1994 Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity. Jacques Ellul Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society. Jacques Ellul It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. Jacques Ellul The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief. Jacques Ellul In sum, thought and reflection have been rendered thoroughly pointless by the circumstances in which modern men and women live and act. Jacques Ellul The Holy Spirit alone can do this, the Holy Spirit alone can establish this link with one's neighbor. Jacques Ellul The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. Jacques Ellul Thinking has become a superfluous exercise... purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game. Jacques Ellul Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of the creation. It makes history possible. Jacques Ellul The intellectual who wants to do her work properly must today go back to the starting point: the woman whom she knows, and first of all to herself. It is at that level, and at no other, that she ought to begin to think about the world situation. Jacques Ellul For the word is dialectical in itself and at the same time is integrated into the whole of existence. By this I mean that the word is intended to be lived. Jacques Ellul All human language draws its nature and value from the fact that it both comes from the Word of God and is chosen by God to manifest himself. But this relationship is secret and incomprehensible, beyond the bounds of reason and analysis. Jacques Ellul Alan Watts Quotes English - Philosopher January 6, 1915 - November 16, 1973 The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. Alan Watts To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float. Alan Watts The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention. Alan Watts You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you. Alan Watts We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. Alan Watts I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is. Alan Watts No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. Alan Watts I owe my solitude to other people. Alan Watts But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything. Alan Watts Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know. Alan Watts Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations. Alan Watts Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth. Alan Watts You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean. Alan Watts How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god. Alan Watts Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command. Alan Watts No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. Alan Watts You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes. Alan Watts The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination. Alan Watts The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it - aliens. Alan Watts Saints need sinners. Alan Watts So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself. Alan Watts Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it's just doing it. Alan Watts Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. Alan Watts The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present. Alan Watts So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing. Alan Watts So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level. Alan Watts But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be. Alan Watts What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag? But you see, that's what people do. Alan Watts The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe. Alan Watts But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful. Alan Watts Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe. Alan Watts We identify in our exerience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us. Alan Watts In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all. Alan Watts The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity. Alan Watts Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them. Alan Watts And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment. Alan Watts And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on. Alan Watts In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way. Alan Watts But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is. Alan Watts But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us. Alan Watts A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world. Alan Watts Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver. Alan Watts The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible. Alan Watts If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly. Alan Watts Wars based on principle are far more destructive... the attacker will not destroy that which he is after. Alan Watts The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile. Alan Watts Faith is a state of openness or trust. Alan Watts Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it. Alan Watts

maefleur01-- yes, "It is embarrassing to put your foot through the floor." I've kept a car so long My foot got wet when I drove in the rain! I actually once drove to my sister's house wearing a climbing helmet inside the car (didn't want to get a head injury if I was in an accident. My sister said the helmet wouldn't have helped, because apparently my head came pre-injured) I've also got into a car and had the front seat inch through what was left of the floor. Pretty dang embarrassing, especially the stares on the highway when I wore the helmet. Ahh, my twenties. When my judgement was green. I'd forgotten about that until I read your comment. So maybe I do deserve another car. I test finally drove a Buick Encore. They have an arm rest that is attached to the driver's seat like it is on an airplane. You can slide it ups but otherwise you can't adjust it at all and it is too high for me. I'd be driving around with one hunched shoulder. There is no arm rest for the passenger. I didn't like the Encore as much as I thought I would. Could be because the kid from the dealer rolled up one for me to try that "had just come in" and it was filthy. Dust and dirt everywhere, literally chunks of mud on the driver's floor mats. Yikes. Freaked me out thinking that all the cars on their lot were totally abused. I actually rejected it. And asked him to get another one to test drive. I knew more about the car than he did, so I directed him to some internet resources to help him sell 'em to other people. I was probably the weird test driver of the week. Ah well. I'm now thinking of a used Mazda CX-5. a 2017. They drive well, and are on the smaller side, although bigger than the Buick Encore. Who knows when they will start to come off lease? I know nothing about this. The local dealer sales people don't work on commission, so I don't mind buying there. And I drove one and mostly liked it. I should have spent more time adjusting the seats first. I need to go back and give it another go. I've got to say the Mazda CX-5 feels big compared to my 2005 Civic. They have a CX-3 model that is smaller, but perhaps too small. Looking around, the CX-5 also seems to mostly come with black interiors, which is kind of a yuck. The dealer has one available now with every bell and whistle for a decent price and milage, dealer certified, but it is black with black interior. Sadly, I am not Batman and choose not to drive around in the Bat Cave. We have 7 months of cloudy weather where I live. It's dark enough thank you! And the saga continues!