It's been too long, I know. It's not that I haven't had the time or been too stressed out to write; it's more that when I dip into the well for the words, the bucket comes up dry. Failing inspiration, I'll pump the well full with grim determination.

A dry anything is surprising, since it's all rain, all the time this summer. More water fell in Wednesday than is normal in a month. And showers still dominate the forecast. The newspapers are chock-full of images of flooded out river banks, footbridges even with the current, sidewalk underpasses as small ponds. Not too exciting, but when natural disasters are few and far between these picture resonate more deeply with the locals than all the waterlogged Bangladeshis or flash-flooded Romanians that preceded them.

With that in mind, we spent the last two days at Linnanmäki, rain wet and motion sick. (Or Melina and I were motion sick, the kids chugged along nicely.) Linnanmäki reminds me that I'm getting old. Each year the rides affect me more, my stomach complains a little louder. In the not too distant future I'll be the lame dad escorting his children around the park, unable to ride with them. Yuck. Owen loved it. Not even three, he screamed delightedly through roller coasters and jolting machines alike. I guess that's why you shell out the cash for amusement parks.

**********************************************************

Lately I've spent an enormous amount of energy dreaming/planning about what car I will buy once I return to Maryland. Traditionally, I'm not a "car guy", but maybe that label is outdated. These last three car-less years have provided me with new insights into automobiles.

Helsinki by bus is possible and only mildly irritating. (It's sure provided me with plenty of reading time.) But anything outside the city limits is off limits. I live about one kilometer from Espoo and never go there because 6.80€ round trip is too much to pay and my monthly bus pass is for Helsinki only. So if Espoo is too far, the rest of Finland might as well be China. (We do go to Sipoo, but that merely siphons money from other travels.) Consequently, we rarely leave this city, which though nice, is stifling when the sentence is life. So I'm ready for the liberty of four wheels and a gas tank.

A car in Finland, with our Finnish budget, doesn't mean freedom, it means burden. So I haven't dreamed about it until now. In five weeks I'll be in the land of wheels and deals, and I'll be helpless as a babe without my own. Dreams, dreams, dreams...

Choosing a car is one part practical need, one part personal taste, and one part politics. It's what you need, against what you want, against what you can afford. People read a lot into your character from the car you drive, we'll see what I say about myself.