This once-weekly updating is getting old--it seems like only my weekends are worth posting about lately. We spent this weekend at Mike and Ali's house in West Valley, and did some xmas shopping while we were up there (though not nearly enough xmas buying). We're still not finished buying gifts for anybody, but we have partial gifts for a few. Most of the weekend was spent driving around the Salt Lake valley looking for ideas. Today was really fun--I did only a little shopping, and then we all drove up Big Cottonwood Canyon to Silver Lake. The drive was beautiful, with bright blazes of orange and yellow quakies, and many areas of rust-colored scrub oak. I've come to really appreciate my Taurus, since during last year's trip up there, we had to stop several times to let the Subaru's engine cool down. Speaking of Subarus, I must have seen literally hundreds of them up the canyon--it seems like about 1/10th of all vehicles up there were Subarus.

And speaking of my Taurus, it's in desperate need of a brake job. The front brakes are getting really bad, and it's much more noticeable when driving in Salt Lake rush-hour traffic. I haven't actually looked at the brake pads to see how far they're worn down, but I suspect that they're worn down completely (the grinding noise is a dead giveaway). I'm going to try replacing them tomorrow, but you know how new cars are--the manufacturers purposely make them difficult to service, and they undoubtedly make a fortune servicing their newfangled pieces of shit.