Phantom Whispers: Ka...Ka...Ka...Kia!

Say it with me now, Kia. Yep, the Mailman and I talked about the car situation and realized that it was time to fish or cut bait, as they say. So we cut bait. We traded in my 1999 Hyundai Sonata (used when we bought it) for this 2006 Kia Sorento. Isn't a a beauty?

Oh, I told myself not to become attached to a car. I've been hurt before. They've betrayed me, they've quit on me, heck, I even had one try to become a tropical rainforest on me (honest, the thing had a hidden leak that left water sloshing in the glove compartment, trunk and a pool of water on the back passenger side.....oh, it was not pretty, let me tell you.) But despite my good intentions I am falling for this SUV hard. I now have the biggest vehichle of the three in the family. We had to have something with a better ground clearance than the old car, which cleared almost nothing. This past year we bought some undeveloped property towards eastern WA and the road to it would have wiped out the poor little Sonata. The Sorento will eat it up with its on demand 4 wheel drive.

I am grateful to the Sonata, though. It did what it was supposed to do, it got me from place to place, safely. And really, isn't that what you most want from a car? But soon we were going to have to sink major money into it. So, it was time. Thank you, Grey Ghost for your faithful service. Live long and prosper with a new driver.

Now, to get to work stuff. I finally got the large Traveler's Gate Journal bound. Here is a picture of the gates, pre-embellishing. By the way, you can click on any of these pictures to see them larger and clearer.

Here are the parts waiting to be put together.

And here is the bound journal.

I still have a lot of things I want to do to this journal before I'm done playing with it. I want to add a lot of tabs to it. I also want to tone down the white of the pages and antique them a bit.

Here is a picture where you can see the binding better. It is an experimental binding that worked out okay, but I am not totally happy with it. I'm going to let it sit a bit and if I'm not happy with it, I'll tear it out and do something else with the binding.

And, though this is late, I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. The Mailman, Eldest Son, Produce Guy and his girlfriend and I drove down to Centralia to meet up with my sister and Father for a Thanksgiving buffet at the Olympic Hotel. The atmosphere is charming to say the least and the food was quite good. We didn't get to have any leftovers but we didn't have any clean up either. It was a nice compromise, meeting halfway and getting to enjoy each other's company. And my dad and sister got to meet the girlfriend. I was glad she bucked up her courage to spend so much time with us all as she is very shy. Tiny, wee thing, she is. Anyhow, I highly recommend eating at the Olympic Hotel if you are in Centralia. I'm looking for excuses to spend the night there as the rooms look to be a treat.

Hope you are all well and staying warm. The other holidays are fast approaching.......where does the time go?