The Prius and a Government Shutdown...

Ben and I recently decided and acted on buying a new car.  A Toyota Prius.  Our dealer at the dealership actually just sent us a thermos as a thank you gift, addressed to just me.  Thanks Dennis!  It was actually everal weeks ago Ben that mentioned a desire in buying this car (for the obvious benefits of better gas mileage, and if you know us, we sure know how to rack up the mileage on our cars), but he mentioned it with the thought of not buying it until about August.

Then the tsunami hit Japan.

That same weekend Ben stopped by the dealership to talk Prius and was encouraged to look at buying it sooner than later.  You see, up thru now there have been some really good incentives on the Priuses to buy them, incentives that very easily will go away with the manufacturing power behind them swept away.  The priuses are manufactured solely in Japan.  Today I ran across a video discussing the future of Toyota in Japan and found it interesting.  Check it out here.

I think it is interesting how interconnected and interdependent our world is.  The future of Japan is definitely something we need to keep in our prayers.  They are in for a hard period of rebuilding that will last a long time.  Having seen how long it has been taking places like New Orleans get back together (and there is still work to be done there) gives me an idea how long it will take Japan.  Though I imagine it will take even longer yet.

One of the reasons we bought the Prius (and for the week we've owned it, we have enjoyed it very much) was to take it on long trips.  Ben is in the guard and his unit is a ways away.  This weekend he is gone to do his duty for the weekend.  Well, he got to drill and now there could be a government shutdown.  So his guard unit decided to cancel the drill just in case.  Which basically means all the prep work for the weekend that he and others have been doing is for nothing.  They have to clean everything back up (throw out food...) and just go home.  Good news, I'll see my husband again soon.  Bad news, the government just threw a wrench in a lot of peoples lives due to not being able to agree on the budget.

Now I don't know all the problems with trying to agree on a budget.  I don't listen to or read the news enough to be any sort of authority on that.  What I do know is that our nation depends on the government to be able to establish a budget for the year and they have failed to do so.  Check out this article for interesting insights on how this will affect different jobs.