Rainfurrest update: I have enough PTO to cover taking a couple of days for the con, and still cover my PTO for MFF. My workload is crazy nuts pretty much going into next year so I don't see work putting me in a situation where I'm going to burn through that PTO prematurely. If I can find crash space for Thurs/Fri/Sat night, then I'll make a go of it.

In other news...

I'm considering doing something mildly stupid but fun. I've been car payment free for a couple of years now while I stabilized everything after the move. Between cutting payments on the house/condo mess down and gearing up to sell those along with raises/OT/bonuses, things have turned up pretty good this year. Now... traditionally I'm way behind on doing something stupid like getting into a new Mustang. The problem with that is, Ford is retarded and thinks that GT Mustangs are now a 35-40K car. For that kind of money I could get a used Shelby GT500 or easily another Terminator. Regardless, I've no interest in getting hung up in that kind of debt on a car.

Now, instead of that I could try the *other* angle. I've been poking around and have my eyes on a 03 Mach 1 with 36K miles on it. I've yet to see the car, but looking at the carfax on it there's a black mark so to speak. Somewhere around 25K miles it shows on record that Ford replaced the main computer, some wiring harnesses, the clutch and the transmission... which is a pretty significant failure. Having owned one of those before though, I know that's not exactly an uncommon area of failure on the Mach 1s. My other concern would be with the head tick issue that buried the motor in my Mach and my Cobra. It's simply a piss poor design by Ford, and unless this car was either very lucky or someone did the coolant bypass mod to it, the head is probably going to be an issue with that car. Also it's black on black like I actually wanted when I bought mine new.

I've also got a couple of Mazdaspeed 3s that look promising. One being an 07 in the same color blue I had before, the other being an 09.

In looking at the new stuff that's out there (Focus ST/Fiesta ST/Mustang/Subaru WRX/Mazdaspeed 3), either the styling is just fucking ugly/unimaginative, overloaded with 10K in electronics/navigation I could give a rat's ass about, or gets woefully poor mileage for this day and age. That last one in particular frustrates me with Mazdaspeed. If Ford can get 35mpg out of the Focus ST than Mazda should be getting that out of the Mazdaspeed by now.

Ultimately I'll probably do nothing, just keep driving the Mazda 2. Technically the two Mustangs should be the toys, but the reality is they're both very much projects in need of a lot of work. I enjoy them, but not the way I used to enjoy the Mazdaspeed or the Mach. And of course if I get rid of the Mazda I'll get an earful from mom because even at 36 years old, every decision I make to spend/enjoy my money is a poor one apparently. I was expecting to hold on until after we sell the house. I don't have to, but that's the "smart" and "safe" choice.