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Goodbye, LS-430; hello, Prius.

After three years of problem-free ownership, I traded in my 2006 Lexus LS-430 UL with 90,098 miles for a 2010 Toyota Prius V with Advanced Technology Package (72,4xx miles) on Friday, 11 March 2016. The dealer had put a date of 8 March or so on the papers, but I really signed on 11 March.

I decided on a Prius back when gas prices were higher. Today, 0.87 octane is about $1.75/gallon and Premium is about $2.15. These are pretty good prices, but I expect them to go back up. Not only will I get better MPG (as much as 51 vs 17.3 per the dash on my LS), I’ll also be buying regular instead of premium. My hope is for my monthly gas bill to go down to about $25 for my car, but we’ll see.

It was time for me to try a new car. Where my Lexus was extremely reliable, extremely luxurious and extremely powerful, I bought this Prius in hopes of it being extreme in its own ways: extremely reliable and extremely economical. And extremely convenient, thanks to bluetooth music support.

I paid $13,500 and saved $720 in sales tax by trading my LS-430 in to the same dealer who sold me my Prius. I found him on Craigslist.

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Tulster Profile Glock 26 Holster, Coyote

Over the years, I’ve bought a few holsters in my search for my ideal small of the back Glock 26 holster. I’ve got a Desantis, a Blackhawk, and a Galco which lost its snap eventually, so I cut its leather flap off. The Desantis and Blackhawk holsters are thick leather, so they stick out too far, and the Galco broke. So I went looking for something else a while back. Eventually, on Amazon.com, I stumbled upon the Tulster Profile holster (in Coyote Brown) and I was extremely interested. The reviews all screamed, “Buy it!” So I did. Boy, am I glad I did! This holster is not an SOB (small of back). It’s for appendix or four o’clock (right behind the right hip) carry. That was a concern of mine as I’d really only been looking for SOB and thought appendix carry would a) print; and b) be pointing at my body all the time. I was half right. This thing hardly prints on me. And the draw and return to holster are effortless, though it doesn’t threaten to fall out on its own.

This thing is “just right”.

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Fuji X100T making my Nikon D600 superfluous

I carry my Fuji X100T everywhere. It’s in my Tom Bihn Synapse 25 backpack, which is essentially part of my body. The X100T does what I want a camera to do. I keep my Nikons around, for what? To use my 80-200 f/2.8 lens for school shows and that’s about it. I’m seriously considering selling all my Nikkor lenses and just going full-on X100T for everything that I don’t snap with my iPhone 6.

Long, Wide

With my Nikon I can go very long and ultra-wide. For everything else (98% of what I shoot), there’s my Fuji — the champion of skin tones and fill flash. My X100S was sharper wide open than my X100T, but at the company Christmas party I compared my X100T to another specimen and they were identical wide open. I mean identical. So either the X100S is simply sharper than the X100T wide open, or, as DavidG put it, I had a “Super S”. I don’t really care either way, because I like what the X100T offers above the “S”.

I did use my D600 for Leyna’s Abe Lincoln school puppet show project. That was fun.

My wife says to keep the Nikon.

4 April 2016: Here’s to listening to one’s wife. I used my D600 (with 80-200mm f/2.8 lens and Kenko 1.4x teleconverter) to my daughters’ Easter egg hunt last week and and very glad I had it. I would not have gotten any hunting pics without a long lens as my four year old ran through the citrus grove in search of bounty.