Just got the car back from Maaco. WOW! I really like the new color. It's New Beetle "Techno Blue." I can see some red here and there -- inside the side mirrors, under the hood, and of course inside the doors. But overall, I think they did a great job. The big surprise is that the car looks different inside too. I guess because the light reflecting off the exterior paint affects the color inside.
Just got back from a weekend in Asheville, NC. It was a short drive (about three and a half hours each way) but I was pleased by how easy the trip was. This is going to be a great car for distance driving. When we got to the hotel, I thanked undersea mah jongg for the nice drive by running into a concrete wall in the parking lot. Oops! At first I thought I'd gotten away with only a nick in the paint, but the front bumper is visibly warped on the right side. I may not get it repaired. I don't think you'll be able to see it once the carpet is in place.
This morning we went to Maaco and scheduled the paint job. The guy wanted to know why I was repainting a car whose current paint was in such good shape. So I explained to him that I was going to decorate it and showed him the carpet sample. He took it pretty well -- he was clearly appalled but not hostile or nasty. He suggested that I should be arrested for defacing such a nice car, but he said it in a nice way!
Today I checked North Carolina's motor vehicle regulations. It looks like I won't be able to drive with the Christmas lights on. The laws about additional lighting are vague enough that any cop who didn't like them could write me a ticket and probably make it stick. Oh well, I guess it will be a "parking lot only" feature.
We got started a tonight, sort of, by decorating the car with Christmas tree lights for our night out at the drive-in theater. (They showed Superfly!) It was a quick-n-dirty installation: I used electrical tape to attach the lights to the exterior, and my friend Lisa explained about DC inverters that convert the cigarette lighter into an outlet.