New Car! And, life and death.

So, Car Man totally came through for me! I drove up to Middletown, Connecticut Saturday, a two hour and forty five minute drive, in the Sentra, turned it over to Car Man, and got my new car. The drive was long but uneventful- I kept looking at my GPS and praying the car would make to under 100 miles, because with AAA +, we get up to 100 miles of free towing. Then, I prayed I wouldn't break down on the Tappan Zee Bridge, because it is a very long and very narrow bridge, with no breakdown lanes; if anything ever happens on that thing, it's tied up for hours upon hours, and I didn't want to end up as part of a traffic report! Then, I prayed I'd at least get into Connecticut, because I would feel less of a douche telling the tow truck driver to tow me to just south of Hartford.

I made it, twenty minutes early for my appointment with Car Man. I allowed myself three hours to get there, especially since I didn't drive above 65 MPH the whole way. Car Man was out on a test drive with another client, so I hung out in the showroom until he got there, and my cousin Nina showed up soon after. By just after 2pm, I drove out of there with my shiny new navy blue 2009 Altima! They handled all of the registration stuff for me, and transferred the Sentra plates onto the Altima. The only weirdness is I have no inspection sticker on the car; that apparently comes with the permanent registration card, in the mail, but it's a bit nerve-wracking driving around without one!

I love my new car. It's not a terrific time for us to be taking on a car payment, honestly, but hey, the car is shiny and has lots of cool gadgets. It is easily the coolest car I have ever owned. Pictures will be forthcoming once the weather clears and I can take nice ones to appropriately show off its shinyness.

Little Brother called Darrel today- Niece #3 is coming home tomorrow!! Yay!! of course, he never calls me, or emails me, or whatever, nor does SIL, so I am guessing this means her body temperature and digestive issues have been resolved. I am hopefully going to see her Sunday, after my Convention gets out.

I went to a wake this evening. The father of a coworker died. He'd been really sick for four years or so, with various types of cancer, but what killed him in the end was pneumonia. He was 60 years old. It got me thinking, as I drove home, about pneumonia in general. I was very ill in March 2007 with double pneumonia, in addition to a type of infection called empyema. My doctor told me that if I had walked around like that another couple of days, I could have died.

I actually told the whole story to my cousin Saturday. She'd known I was sick, obviously. She'd known I was very sick, but I don't think she'd known just how very very sick I truly was. I'm not sure too many people really do know that. (Well, aside from my coworkers, who had to cover my classes for seven weeks while I stayed home recuperating, on IV antibiotics.) I think a big reason is that people just don't think that much about pneumonia anymore. They don't give it the respect it deserves. Far more people die of it each year than you'd think, and antibiotics don't always cure it.