Early last week I got the surprise of a lifetime in my mailbox. Well, that's over-exaggerating because had I received the surprise of a lifetime people around the globe would have spent their days wondering how Gerard Butler made himself small enough to fit in a standard mailbox. Anway, it was mildly surprising only because I'd never been chosen before to participate in this well-known public survey... J.D. Power contacted me and wanted my opinion! They wanted my feedback on a car that I previously owned...

... back when I lived near the ocean, in a tropical location, and ran a party entertainment business out of my trunk.* I was the clown, Vera ran the music, and Rosemary made the balloon animals. It was a wildly-successful venture once Rosemary figured out how to retract her claws when working with the balloons. Until then it was just wild.
Truth be told, the survey was less about the custom-painted Toyota Camry** and more about the Audi A4 that I leased for 2 years.

I answered the questions to the best of my knowledge but really, it's been a year since I had the car and my memory is foggy at best when it comes to the mileage the car had at the time of it's last oil change. I'm not sure I could tell you what my current car's mileage was at it's last oil change.
Anyway, the survey was 65 questions long and I hung in there for a good 13 of them. After that I started making designs with the fill-in circles. I hope the associates at J.D. Power take a good look at it when they get it back. It's very pretty.
You're probably wondering why I even completed the dang thing. I'll tell you why....folded up very nicely within the pages of it was an incredibly crisp $1 bill. I haven't seen bills this flat since I was 11 and spending my afternoons ironing the baby-sitting money*** that I kept stored in a Royal Dansk cookie tin.

*I have never run a business out of my trunk... not that I couldn't. Right now I could probably start a traveling bocce ball tournament that I announce with flyers printed out using an Epson printer. Really, I have those items in my trunk RIGHT NOW. Why? I don't know.
**That's because I've never owned a custom-painted Toyota Camry, as much as I've wanted to.
***It's 75% cotton you know. It irons very nicely on high.
Whoa! I just realized that this is my 200th post! What's even weirder is that my 100th post was also about the Audi. Hmmm. I'm not quite sure what that means but I'm thinking I should get a subscription to Car & Driver if I'm writing about cars this much.




















