Let Your Fingers Do the Walking

I am truly confused by the number of commercials touting the benefits of the Yellow Book vs. the Yellow Pages. Who exactly are these ads aimed at? I have never in my life intentionally chosen one directory over the other. Whichever is the first in the stack in the closet is the one I go for. They both get tossed on the end of my driveway every year. It's not as if I call the phone company and say, "Oh, send me the Yellow Book! It's so much better than the Yellow Pages." Frankly, if these companies really wanted people to use their product, they'd keep their websites updated and call it a day. Those monster books are a last resort as far as I'm concerned. In this day and age, if the company doesn't have a decent web page, then I don't want to deal with them. Do they have to keep killing trees to print these space sucking doorstops? Anyone know of a way to opt out of getting phone directories?

I Was Wrong

The car in question was not a Jetta, but a Passat. Seventeen hours of nagging later, TFB and I were at the VW dealership, sitting in the cargo area of the 2005 Passat wagon.

I'm in love.

There are a few minors flaws, though. I wasn't thrilled with the frou frou fake wood detailing. It reminded me of an old person's Cadillac. The 18 million options of how to adjust the seat, steering wheel, and moonroof boggled my mind a bit. (Whatever happened to sunroofs? Are they not cool anymore? Where'd this moonroof nonsense come from?) It doesn't have the built in child seats that I am so fond of in the Volvo Cross County. Also, the saleswoman, scared the heck of out me by putting her hand over mine during the test drive to show me how the gears could be shifted into some foolish gadget called the Tiptronic (Triptronic?) to make the car switch from an automatic to a standard. Umm, lady? I'm trying to merge here!

Now, I can drive a standard. It's how I learned to drive. I'm simply bowing to the usefulness of the automatic after having sat in rush hour traffic one too many times. What on earth is the point of having a car that switches from one to other? If I wanted to shift, I'd buy the standard!

All that aside however...

I'm in love.