New Beetle

Well, it isn't really "New" Beetle, but it is a "New Beetle" (a 2003 Model)

An acquaintance of mine , who operates a body shop, bought it for me from a dealer in Georgia. It was auctioned off because it had a bent nose.

We replaced the left front fender, hood, front bumper skin and left headlight. Then, after the proper amount of sanding and painting, it looks like new again.

With only 37,000 miles on it, it should last me a while. It's a lot of fun to drive and gets considerably better gas mileage that the Murano gets. Surprisingly it has a great deal of leg room, in the front, at least where I sit.

I guess once the weather warms up a bit I'll clean the Murano and advertise it for sale.

This is a mixed emotional bag for me. I love the Murano better than anything I've ever owned, but it's a reasonably expensive vehicle for me to be running errands with.

Let it warm up outside, and I'll need to come to some conclusion.

Musical Cell Phones

So, ..... I had Cingular service, then I switch to TracFone where I was using so many minutes that I saw no savings in the Pre-Paid service. I tried to switch back to AT&T (the new Cingular) but they couldn't port my number from TracFone for some reason. So, .... I tried something entirely new, ... I ported my number over to Sprint.

Boy was that a mistake! I have never had such poor cell phone service in all of my life!
Many places where I had previously used my cell phone I found that I had no service with Sprint. Some places, just enough signal to send a text message but not a place a call.
Then there's the issue of dropped calls. I lost count of the number of times I had a call drop right in the middle of a conversation.

Then, ... to add insult to injury, .... they billed me for $32.00 of downloaded ring tones (at 4:30 AM) which I didn't get (I'm not even up that time of day). Plus another $75.00 for internet access, and I have all internet and Data access disabled in my phone.
We did get those charges removed, by the way.

OK,.... enough is enough, ... I ported my number back to AT&T this week. They even threw in a free cell phone.

The moral of this story, .... If you have service other than Sprint, ... stay there!
If you have sprint service, and it works for you, ... fantastic!
If you have Sprint service and you experience the kinds of problems I described, .... Run!

I'm tired of playing musical cell phone, ... I think I'll give it a rest for a while.