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QUOTE (ptatc @ Feb 13, 2012 -> 02:11 PM) If she is at all a decent driver, put her in the suburban. That's what I learned to drive in and I was comfortable driving vehicles of any size because of it. Also, it is safer. My first "accident" was when someone hit me from behind and I was to nervous to avoid it. The wreck totalled the other vehicle (Z24) but barely dented the bumper on mine. Turns out she was 16 with a new license as well. Her father called mine and wanted to see if everything was OK. My Dad laughed and said don't worry about it and explained the situation. The girl's father's reply....can I buy the Suburban. My mom has driven a suburban for her company for the past 20 years. The only time I've ever seen a Suburban totaled was when one got hit by a semi. QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Feb 13, 2012 -> 02:10 PM) As in how their current styles will look in 4-5 years or what their styles will look in 4-5 years? Thus far they have led the industry in styling, because they had to get noticed and put loads of money into R&D (in US locations primarily). I would be disappointed if they strayed from this business model. EDIT: I will be looking at a Hyundai for my first new car (bought my current 03 Hyundai from the parents who bought it for me to use in high school and during the summers), the Veloster has gotten great reviews and the Elantra and Sonata are leaders in their respective categories. I debated on the Elantra. Slightly smaller car with a slightly lower price tag and the listed MPG is better. My biggest problem was that a power driver-side seat isn't even an option on the Elantra like it is on the Sonata. Plus I like having the slightly bigger back seat if I need to fit all 3 of my kids in there.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 13, 2012 -> 01:53 PM) If you don't drive the old one, you can bump it down to storage insurance until the kid gets the license. She'll still be driving it to get her required experience hours.

We will definitely have to sit down and figure out our insurance costs, but I don't think that kicks in until she's actually a licensed driver. By that time she might have a part time job to help with the costs. If nothing else, we'll just make her the full-time driver on our suburban.

We are going with the Hyundai Sonata.

My wife and I have been having a debate for the past couple of weeks. We are planning on getting a new car in the next 1-3 months. My daughter is 15 and just started taking driving lessons. She has to have her permit for a minimum of 9 months so she won't be getting her license until December at the absolute earliest. The car we have now is a 2003 Grand Prix with over 222,000 miles on it. It has a few minor problems but runs pretty good for the most part (knock on wood). The debate we are having is whether or not to keep the old car for her to drive around so we don't have to worry about her getting into an accident with the new car or trading it in and knocking some money off the new car. My wife wants to keep it so our daughter can drive it and there's no chance of her wrecking the new car. I'm looking at all the added costs of keeping it when the only person that will be driving it doesn't even have a license yet since my wife doesn't drive at all. Our insurance will go up, we still have to keep up the maintenance, plus we have to find a place to park it since we only have a single car driveway that's already filled up with 3 other vehicles. We have full coverage on our car now but if when we get the new one, we could drop to liability on the old one to save a little money. The problem with that is if my daughter has a minor accident (say she backs into something and takes out a taillight and cracks the bumper) then we are on the hook for the cost of the entire repair. Also, if the car suddenly needs some major repair (engine blows, transmission goes out) then we might as well junk it and get something else. At least if we trade it in we'll get something out if it. Even if it's only $1000. We do have a suburban that she could drive if she really needed it but my wife thinks its too big for her. I think she'd actually be safer in it. It takes a lot to wreck a suburban.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 10, 2012 -> 09:46 AM) Obviously Spaceballs is banned in Syria.

QUOTE (farmteam @ Feb 9, 2012 -> 10:55 PM) If I were the person that received that cover letter and resume, I would keep it on my desk long enough to go to a custom stamp-making website, order one that says "DOUCHE" in bolded red lettering, have it shipped to my office, and stamp it on every page of the document. Then I'd piss on it, a la Lou Gramm. Do you mean Lou Brown?

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Feb 8, 2012 -> 12:16 PM) Man, come on, this is a thread for talking about our "animal friends". I have two awesome cats. AWESOME. If you don't like your cats, that's your problem, but saying "f*** cats" is bulls*** in my opinion. So f you and your s***ty dog. Cats aren't for everyone and some cats can be real s***heads. I have four and had 3 others that died already. I've grown up with them my whole life and they've all been vastly different. We have one now that's just about the perfect cat. He's very clean, very mellow, very out-going and very lovable. My girls could pick him up and hold him all day long and he'd be perfectly content.

You already have to remember to take the dog outside at least twice a day. We've just gotten into the habit of filling their bowls one of the times they are outside. Dogs are very food motivated. That's why most people use treats when training their dog. I'm not even sure how you would go about teaching a dog to not eat when the food is always available. Did you actively train yours that way or do they just know to stop when they are full? Dogs jumping on the counter trying to steal food just need to be trained to not do that. It's not because they are hungry and have no food in their bowls.

We've got a 13-year-old Husky that has eaten Purina Dog chow pretty much his whole life. In the past couple of years he's started to gain some weight We think it's because he has arthritis. He's not nearly as active as when he was younger and he's really slow to lay down and get back up again. We also finally had him neutered and that really slowed him down as well. We've also got a 3-year-old Shar-pei/Pug mix and she eats Purina Beneful. She chases the Husky around and keeps him a little more active than he would be on his own otherwise.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Feb 1, 2012 -> 01:29 PM) Wow, I've never even heard of 12" fast pitch softball for guys. They are rare but a few men's teams still exist. QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 1, 2012 -> 01:38 PM) Is that the one that includes stealing and balk moves for pitchers? Yep. I know the women can pitch pretty fast, but I’ve heard of guys that can get up to 80 MPH with a softball. And the mound is only 40 ft away.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 31, 2012 -> 11:07 PM) Used to be that boys did in fact play softball growing up, in Chicago - 16" in particular. Even the high schools had teams. That's all I played growing up. 12" Fast-pitch though. I found it difficult to make the transition to HS baseball though.

QUOTE (knightni @ Jan 31, 2012 -> 08:45 PM) Separate teams by sex, not one team. Honestly, softball shouldn't even exist in a competitive youth format. It's a game that is played by people who would rather be playing baseball if given the option. Women should play baseball on their own teams and softball as a sport should be delegated to the YMCA/church/beer leagues. Are you talking fast-pitch softball or slow-pitch softball? They are vastly different.

I pulled into my driveway last night and happened to glance down at my odometer. It was at 222,222.2 I didn't even notice it until that exact moment.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Jan 31, 2012 -> 04:06 PM) I think generally there aren't many boys volleyball teams and if boys starting playing on those girls teams there would be outcries. Someone tried it a few years behind me in school and they were basically told not to try They way I always understood it was that if the school doesn't offer the sport for both boys and girls, either one can try out for the same team. That's why girls were always welcome to try out for football and guys for cheerleading. Not that any ever did.

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ Jan 31, 2012 -> 03:30 PM) Absolutely not. But 99% of the time it is always about how girls/women are being slighted for not being allowed to participate. You almost never hear it from the other side. It's ok for girls to jump on to the football team, or wrestling squad or baseball team. But the second a guy wants to try out for volleyball, field hockey or softball it's no longer okay. Actually my high school didn't have men's volleyball. There were a few of us guys that liked to play and we were pretty good. The volleyball coach said we could join and we almost did. She told us we'd have to wear the same uniforms at the girls though.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Jan 31, 2012 -> 01:41 PM) Someone start a girls league, then people won't b**** when a girl is cut from a boy league. I actually agree with this. If they are switching the league to be all boys and kicking the girls out, they should make an all girls league. 7 years old is old enough to start dividing up the boys and girls. They are going to have to split up eventually anyway since typically the boys play baseball and the girls play softball. Even the men's fastpitch softball leagues use a different size ball than women's. 12" ball for men. 11" ball for women. QUOTE (Harry Chappas @ Jan 31, 2012 -> 01:13 PM) For whatever reason baseball draws this type of scrutiny. Every kid plays baseball. Unfortunately the numbers, 9 per team cause some gaps. You can get by with a soccer team of 18 kids or basketball with 15. It is not easy but it can be done. In baseball though it does not work as a kid may not bat in game as there are limited opportunities for hitters and fielding time. Youth teams really need to be 12 to 15 kids tops. What happens if 17 kids want to play. You can't have two teams because inevitably grandma's 71st birthday will cause a kid to miss. The league my daughter plays in is the same one I played in when I was her age. They always manage to even the teams out. Some may have 13 and other may have 15 but it usually works out. They also have the rule where everyone has to play at least 2 innings and they have age groups all the way up to 16.

I would have clicked already filed but my wife had jury duty last year and I'm waiting to see if we get a 1099 for it. Other than that, they are done and we are getting around $5000 back. QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jan 30, 2012 -> 09:35 AM) People say I'm giving the government an "interest-free" loan, but I don't care. If I had gotten that money bi-weekly during the year, I would have spent it all, not invested it. I like suddenly getting a large bonus check in February to buy something nice with and build up some more savings. Same here. We are using our return to pay off a loan that isn't scheduled to be paid off until 2014. It'll save us a bunch in interest alone.

My daughter started playing softball around age 7. It was her first year playing so she completely missed the t-ball level. In t-ball the boys and girls all play together on the same teams. At the next level, they split up. Boys play baseball and girls play softball. It continues that way pretty much through high school and college. I did read the article and think it's a pretty lousy thing to do if they aren't going to offer softball for the girls to play.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 26, 2012 -> 03:26 AM) If Cabrera can play even a passable 3B, then they are 5 wins better today then they were yesterday. Not if they move Inge and his -.4 WAR to DH.

We use a website called mycheckfree.com for a lot of our bills and have never had a problem. For some reason my wife still insists on writing a check for our mortgage and our two major credit cards (Discover and Chase). The funny thing is we bank at Chase and they also have our mortgage. So we literally pay our Chase mortgage and our Chase credit card with physical checks out of our Chase bank account. I've tried to convince her to just do it all online but she refuses. The Discover bill we pay at Sears. We have one bill that comes out automatically from our checking account but that should be going away real soon. We also pay our sewer bill with a check but that's only once every 3 months.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Jan 25, 2012 -> 12:13 PM) Also they should see if they can get a care credit card from GE to pay for the medical bills. I was able to get 18 months no interest on a 5k emergency vet bill recently, I've never heard of this before. It's a pretty good idea.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 25, 2012 -> 11:52 AM) Excerpt from the Trib today... Always liked the guy, he just wasn't a major league hitter. I'll bet he comes back to the game to be a coach at some point. He's going to sell avocados.

My oldest daughter starts driver's ed classes tomorrow. One of my co-workers suggested that I stock up on alcohol now.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 23, 2012 -> 01:07 PM) I have a perfect record of never trading a car in. They have all either been totaled or the engine blew up and wasn't worth it to fix. We got a new vehicle a year ago finally because our 1997 blew the head. I'm the exact same way. I just keep totalling cars. Which really scares me because I need my current car to last another 6 or 7 months. Even then we are probably going to keep it and just pass it down to my daughter who turns 16 this year.