And Now Its Watch Is Ended...

Yesterday was the last day I had my old car (though the last time I actually drove in it was on Monday). A black 2004 Dodge Stratus. It was the 5th car that I've owned, and I purchased it in July 2009, so had it for close to 10 and a half years (by comparison, I went through my first 4 cars from 1998-2009). It was previously a government car and thus had very low mileage (only around 16,000 miles: when I stopped driving it it was somewhere over 72,000 miles), which partly explains why it lasted as long as it did. Although I'm not a car guy by any means, I will admit that I grew quite attached to this car (mostly due to its sheer longevity, and the fact that I didn't have to sink very much money in it over the years), and kind of had trouble parting ways with it; but to pass inspection I would have had to have had a lot of costly repairs done, and at this point in time, it made more sense to get a newer car. Still, at the very least, I did have one of the main characters in my novel HARLEM SMOKE drive a black 2004 Dodge Stratus, so in a way the car has possibly kind of been immortalized in the realm of Lovecraftian weird fiction (and I say possibly because at first *I* need to be immortalized in the realm of Lovecraftian weird fiction... still, it's the sentiment that counts). In any event, now its watch has ended...