When I was young, I had a fascination for raccoons. Thus, my family would always buy me raccoon items. I had several plush raccoons, several wood and resin items, and even pictures.

As a younger child, I obtained my first Intellivision gaming unit from a garage sale. I saved up all of the cans I could find for months, and eventually managed to buy a rather complete unit for about $32. This was maybe 1986.

As I evolved into a computer geek, I saved up over a hundred dollars to obtain a Gravis Ultrasound – not only did it offer 16 bit audio, but hardware mixing. This means you could actually play games and compose music on the-then-standard 20Mhz machine.

In my early 20s, I accumulated G-Body cars; all Oldsmobiles – but I figured I’d eventually get a GN. I never did.

Now, I seem to be collecting SAABs.

SAAB the first, my first (and currently only) new car:

I fell in love with this car. It is such a quirky little thing, but so much fun. I drove it up to Montana in August . Within less than two days, I made it there without so much as a hint of pain; nor a ticket – despite my best efforts.

Well, a year and some months later, I found this beast on Craigslist:

When I first spotted it, the turbo was blown, and it was unusable. It was entirely undrivable. It was just.. trashed, mechanically. Eventually, the price for this carcass went down, and my interest went up.

Despite being 10 years old and having 160,000 now 172,000 miles on it, it’s in brilliant shape inside, and out. I couldn’t say no, and now I have a second car – or as I like to call it, “my soon to be daily driver.” The rebuild is nearly complete, and should hopefully be entirely roadworthy and smoggable in the upcoming weeks. I’ve just ordered more parts, and rebuilt the foglamp assembly on the right side.

Those Oldsmobiles are long lost to the annals of time- each of them were sold for hundreds after thousands invested. I currently have 4 functional Intellivsion units in the garage with several games. Years ago I sent my GUS collection to Trixter, who still hasn’t cataloged and inventoried it for historical purposes. My relatives still sometimes send me raccoons. If I ever have company, I’ll have to disclose this – I don’t think it’s normal for a place to be filled with polyresin and wooden striped critters and pictures.