On personal updates and other things.

In reviewing my previous post, I noted the Saudis have declared that in order to maintain a desired level of social services they feel that the desired price of oil ought to be about $100 (US) a barrel I went on to note that their previous target price was $75. One thing I neglected to mention, the Kind of Saudi Arabia is not exactly known for it's first rate social services.

In other more personal news, regular reads may not know that Lesley left me. Actually that woman left me some time ago, since then I met someone else and got married. Now Mrs. Cole and I, well really Mrs. Cole, I just help out here and there, are expecting little ones, not a little one, but twins! I think I've got a picture around here...

Of course when I found out twins were in the picture I remarked that we'd need a bigger house. The ultrasound technician said that's what every father who finds out he's about to have twins says, a new house and a new car. Anyway last night I watched a rerun of Top Gear where James May is reviewing some Land Rover and at first I thought it looked kind of cool and has a modest four banger diesel. Then I realised, that Range Rover's got less internal volume than my Jetta, probably gets way worse milage, and honestly, I'm never going to drive across Death Valley, at least off road across Death Valley, so what's the good of such a silly machine? I will get a bigger car, I think a diesel A3, it's a hatch back pretty good on the comforts and great on the milage. Of course most importantly, as a soon to be father, it's got a great saftey rating. (For reference, here is the NHTSA web site.)

Actually the NHTSA never rated the A3, but the similar A4 got five stars. By contrast my Jetta got four or five stars depending on where the crash happened. The only Land Rover rating I can find is for a '96 Range Rover, the NHTSA only tested front impact on drive and passenger and it only got three out of five stars. (Side impact was unrated, but I will bet it wouldn't do well.)

But back to the wedding, I won't bother with the wedding photos, but I will throw in a link to some pictures we took from Florida just before the wedding.

One day in Florida it was very cold, about seven degrees Celsius, my future mother-in-law thought it would be funny to go for a walk on the beach in winter attire. She had left Toronto just a few days earlier in the middle of a snow storm. I took some pictures with the zoom lens from her apartment (she's a snow bird).

The apartment is about 2km south of the Kennedy Space Center, the tour guide, (of course I took a tour!) was saying that KSC is America's space port, I never thought of that previously, space port, sounds like something out of Star Trek, but it's actually true, KSC is a space port. Weird to even think that, anyway here are the pictures.