Her name is Sheila, and she's SO MUCH BETTER than Bruce!

...Now, if you've been paying attention, you will know that today is the day that Jen and Irene and I are heading out on our Great Ocean Road driving adventure. So naturally the first thing that we needed to do was to, well, pick up a car. Jen and Irene are both at work right now, which means the job fell to me.

And I survived!

This is only really exciting because I had to navigate driving through downtown Melbourne, on my own, and driving on the opposite side of the road from what I'm used to. Fortunately the route wasn't all that challenging, with the exception of the double-laned roundabout that I didn't know was there until I was in it! It's funny the things you don't pay attention to when you travel by public transit. I drove the car back to our house via Elizabeth Street and Sydney Road, the route that the #19 tram takes to get downtown, and which I ride all the time. Thing is, I'd never really paid attention to the fact that there is a very large, two-laned roundabout at the junction where Sydney turns into Elizabeth! Yikes! But I navigated it without a problem. Nobody even honked their horn at me!

I don't know that I ever want to have to parallel park on the left side of the road, though - it's really disorienting having the passenger sit on my left rather than my right!

This car is much, MUCH nicer than the last one. You may recall that when Jen, Tarra and I were in Tasmania, we drove around in an old beaten-up car we named Bruce. Well let me tell you. Our current car is a cute little red Hyundai Accent. She has air conditioning, power steering and (gasp) a CD player (all of these are improvements over poor Bruce). I have decided that her name must be Sheila (unlike our last car, this one is definitely a lady!). So now all I've gotta do is sit here waiting for Jen and Irene to get their butts home from work so we can get on the road.

Wheee!