This was going to be a pretty good review, until I hit mile 20,130 and my CD player took a crap. I had just switched from Mozart to Radiohead and it started making horrible sounds and finally gave messages that said “Bad disc” and “Check owner’s manual.” I doubt the disc is bad because it’s a fairly new and very unscathed CD. Later, after restarting the car, it tried to eject it twice on its own volition but ended up refusing to. So now I have 6 dics in the changer I can’t get at. Argh! At least the radio still works (knock on cheap-looking faux wood).

It’s very frustrating because I bought an Acura to avoid these sorts of problems. I loved my Audi but it had some wiring issues that made me nervous about financing a new one. So we went Acura thinking that it was a fancy Honda and would work until we beat it into the ground. Huh. That hasn’t taken nearly as long as we expected. And with Audi I got a loaner car, so taking it into the dealer wasn’t a big deal. No loaner with Acura, and now that I have a baby it’s going to be a pretty big hassle to take it in for warranty work.

Of course I realize this is just a CD player, it’s not like the engine blew up, but since I hate listening to the radio, it’s a pretty big concern for me. It’s actually the third thing to break, but it’s a little more annoying than the other two. The first is that the defroster vent on the passenger side of the dash doesn’t stay down and is always popped up out of place at an angle (I rarely use a defroster here in hot, sticky Houston so I don’t know if it affects function or not - I doubt it, I think it just looks really bad). The second is last week the pop-out cupholder in the middle row armrest stopped popping out. That happened on my Audi too, so apparently they just aren’t designed well on any car.

Okay. Taking a deeping breath… And on with the review.

I’ve put a lot of miles on this car (for me) in a short amount of time - about 16 months. That’s partly because it is a nice car to drive, but also partly because our other car is a two-seater so we have to take the Acura everywhere now that baby makes 3. So it’s hard to say how it compares to other cars we’ve owned, mileage wise.

Roadtrip

The Acura has been on one roadtrip and I was quite impressed with it. It handled steep and rather insane I-40 outside of Asheville, NC as well as it handled incredibly flat and boring 1-10 in Mobile, AL. It was very easy to drive; my mom drove for parts of the trip and had no problems maneuvering it or parking it. Size-wise, it wasn’t too big to park or go through drive-throughs, but it held a lot of stuff. It got great mileage on the highway: 28 mpg on some tanks (mostly through the flat South). My Mom actually offered to use her Chevy Astro minivan for the trip (eeeeeeeeeeeeeek!) because she was afraid the MDX wouldn’t hold enough junk, but afterwards she was quite impressed.

Comfort

I bought the MDX when I was 5 months pregnant and thought the seats were made in heaven. Now that I’m not pregnant, I can’t get comfortable at all. (It’s kind of funny that the only comfortable thing about my entire pregnancy was this car.) The lumbar is in a really weird spot just below my shoulder blades and isn’t height adjustable so I can’t really use it, but I also can’t find the sweet spot with it “off.” I spend a lot of time futzing with it and the seat angle, trying to find something that works. I’ve been trying for a year now. The seat is pretty flexible in height, though; I wouldn’t mind if it lowered another half inch, but on our long roadtrip it only bothered me a few times when my knees would stiffen up - and I think almost any car would do that after 10 hours of driving.

We hated the passenger seat when we first bought the MDX because the headrest was at an odd angle, but that doesn’t bother us anymore. And the middle row is pretty comfortable, although the front head rests are so big that the passenger views are mostly of black vinyl. We haven’t used the third row at all, so we can’t comment on that, except to say people are surprised to find out it has a third row. I bought a floormat from Acura that covers the rear cargo area, so the seams from the third row are totally hidden.

Whizbangs

We love the power trunk door. It can be opened manually, with the key fob, or with a button in the driver’s door. It closes with the push of a button on the door itself. It’s awesome when I’m carrying the baby and need to throw stuff in there but have my hands full. Heck, it’s awesome when my hands are empty just because I don’t get them dirty touching a filthy door. It’s awesome because I don’t need both hands to close it like I do on a lot of SUVs. Did I mention we love the power trunk?

I’ve used the rear DVD a grand total of once, when I was killing time in a parking lot and happened to have a DVD in the car. I like that it came with wireless headphones. Other than that I can’t comment much. I imagine we’ll use it more in the future on long drives, but I’m not a big fan of TV in the car. My toddler can just look out the windows and deal with it. I would prefer not to have it at all, but it came bundled with the power trunk.

The rear a/c is nice to have, although it cools passenger knees more than the rest of their bodies. A/C in the door pillar or ceiling would be nice, but I’ll take knee-level over none any day. I do really appreciate that it can be adjusted independently from the front a/c. Chris can have the front a/c blowing at 71 degrees and low fan speeds, while I can crank it down to 68 degrees and high fan speeds in the back to combat car sickness.

And the rear heated seats are a really nice bonus, although I’ve noticed they get switched on frequently on accident. I can reach the controls from the front seat so I like to play jokes on my passengers with them. If you’ve never sat on a heated seat and don’t know what to expect, it can be unnerving.

Overall Impression

This is a lot of car for the money. Unfortunately, it’s not a lot of interesting car for the money. It drives well, it carries stuff well, it’s decently comfortable, but it doesn’t excel at anything. It’s not awesome-looking, it doesn’t have an awesome interior, it doesn’t have excellent acceleration. It’s very inoffensive. Truth be told, it’s quite boring. I like my cars to have flair. I want them to be unique, or fast, or fun, or old. I want my car to say something about me, and the Acura says “practical but dull” and that’s just not what I’m looking for.

We first tried out this pizza place with our Corvette club; we took our son earlier this year to another club function and he had his first pizza there.

The pizza is great, and if you like football, the atmosphere is great too. I don’t like football but I’ll deal with it for the pizza. They have several TVs all blaring whatever football games are on (or NASCAR or other sporting events in the off-season).

You seat yourself either at the bar or at tables but are waited on for food and drinks. The service was fabulous the most recent time we went and it’s always been good with our club, too (which is impressive since 50 of us eat at once). The pizzas are brought out and set on trays on the table and are almost too hot to eat.

Chris had an errand to run on Saturday and our son and I went with him on one condition: We stop for dinner at Steel City Pizzeria. It’s about an hour from our house, but well worth the drive.

Must Try

If you’re a meat lover’s fan, try theirs. It’s so covered in meaty goodness that Chris orders it minus two meats just because it’s almost too much meat. I personally like pepperoni, pineapple, and banana peppers. A little salty, a little sweet, and a little tangy. Mmm! They also offer sandwiches, but we haven’t tried them so we can’t recommend them - but I have a feeling they are good too.

Official Web Site: www.steelcitypizzeria.com

My registration was due in July but I didn’t realize it (or find the notice) until September. I’m not a horrible ciitizen, I wasn’t trying to avoid paying the fee, I just totally forgot about it. It doesn’t help that the 2008 stickers weren’t see-through so I can’t see the date from inside my car (they go on the front windshield in Texas). I have a personalized plate, and a cool one at that, so I certainly don’t want it to expire.

So I sent off my money and the statement two months late to the Fort Bend County Tax Assessor, Patsy Schultz. I got an envelope the following week, but instead of my window sticker, it included my statement, my insurance copies, my check, and a form that said ‘We cannot process your registration renewal because of expired registration. Please check one and sign below.” The statements I had to check were:

• The vehicle has been ticketed for expired registration: a $20 penalty is due.
• Yes, the vehicle has been driven on expired registration.
• No, the vehicle has not been driven on expired registration.

That’s it. I had to check one of those and send the form back. It seemed really stupid, especially since nothing was mentioned on the original statement (that I saw) about what to do with expired registrations. I duly checked the “Yes, this vehicle has been driven…” box and sent the whole mess back.

Yesterday I got another envelope from them. Half joking I asked my husband what he thought was in it. It sure wasn’t my sticker! It was the statement, my insurance copies, my check, the first form I had to check, and a new copy of the “cannot process” form, this time with a different section highlighted. It said:

• Your check is over, the correct amount due is $137.47.

And below that someone had written “amt. reflects 12 mths. registration/11 mths special plate fee.” The person that wrote this signed their name and is the same person that signed the first form. (But I’m leaving the name off for privacy’s sake, even though I’m totally aggravated at this point). I don’t know if this particular person is just being awful for awful’s sake or if this person is just following awful orders from the tax assessor.

Now, if I send this back with a new lower check, are they going to jerk around until I only owe 10 months on the special plate and have to write yet another check?

I can’t figure out what’s with this office. I’m not a conspiracy nut, but at this point I’m considering that they’re either stalling until I get a ticket, stalling so my personalized plates expire, or trying to force me into coming to the office which is way off the beaten path and a horrible place to visit. Or this person is just nasty (I’m leaning towards that). I can’t pay the damn thing online because the state won’t allow expired registrations to do that, which seem ridiculous - you think they’d be happy to get expired registrations renewed.

I’m so pissed off at this point that I’m not sure if I’m going to mail the whole mess back YET AGAIN or just go down to the office and cause a scene. I’m considering documenting it all and sending it to TXDoT. Not that they’d do anything, but I’d feel better.

Next time you’re on Route 66 in my hometown of San Bernardino, California, check out the Mattel Toy Store. It’s located on the old site of Norton Air Force Base, in one corner of a huge building. Check the hours before you go; it was closed on Sundays and Mondays when we stopped in.

At first I wasn’t interested in the store since I thought Mattel just made Barbies and my one year old son isn’t quite ready for those, but a look at their website showed Mattel owns Fisher Price, Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Tyco, Power Wheels and more.

The store was pretty big and arranged in aisles by age/brand. They had a LOT of Barbie stuff, but they also had a lot of Dora the Explorer toys, Hot Wheels, an aisle of board games, and many toys from the movie Cars. And Fisher Price makes high chairs and swings, so they had an assortment of those too. The prices list both the regular MSRP and their price. Sometimes they were the same, but usually you saved at least a little bit.

The real gold mine was the scratch and dent room. It was in the back in the actual warehouse and the the toys were fine but the packaging was damaged. We asked a worker about it and she said if one box is damaged they’ll often write off the whole palette so many of the packages had no damage at all. The prices in that room were awesome. I picked up the board game Apples to Apples for $6; it would be $24.99 in a regular store. We ended up buying Adam two bags of toys and spent only $30.

There are 4 Mattel Toy Stores in California, 2 in Texas, and 1 and Wisconsin.

Official website: http://www.mattel.com/matteltoystore/

We stumbled across Potter’s Mark studio while driving around Asheville, North Carolina. Eileen and Marty Black are the owners/potters and are also a delight to be around. They let us tour their shop, see items fresh out of the kiln, and even shared some fresh home-grown strawberries with us.

Red pottery is hard to find because red is a hard color to work with, but Potter’s Mark has some gorgeous red pieces. I bought a vase and a baking dish in a deep, rich red.

I also bought a wine holder in the glaze “Pisgah Night” that is an amazing complement to my granite countertops. I smile every time I look at it.

You can order pieces via their website; allow an 8 week lead time since they make everything to order. I bought four of their pieces while in the studio and can’t wait to order some more.

Official web site: http://www.pottersmark.com/

Chuy’s is a Tex-Mex restaurant that we love for one reason: Creamy Jalapeno. The food? Eh. Some of it’s good, some of it is not so good, but it’s the Creamy Jalapeno chip dip that keeps us coming back for more.

You used to have to ask for it, but now they (at least Chuy’s River Oaks) brings it to you with the chips. It’s a little tangy, a little spicy, and very creamy. It’s so good I’ve bought it by the tub for parties.

Must Try

The Creamy Jalapeno, of course. I like the Chuychangas with tomatillo sauce, while Chris usually gets beef fajitas or taco salad. Avoid the Chuy’s Special Enchiladas; the one time I ordered that it was totally flavorless. It tasted like plain cooked chicken. I can make plain blah chicken at home!

Official web site: http://www.chuys.com/

Pappadeaux is hands-down one of my favorite restaurants. When someday we move away from Houston, we’ll first check to make sure our new home has Pappadeaux.

Mostly found in Texas, there are some in other states including Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, New Mexico and Ohio.

It’s part of the Pappas restaurant family, including the other eateries Pappasitos, Pappas Seafood House and Pappas Bros. Steakhouse, Yia Yia Mary’s and a few others. I’ve only tried a few of the other restaurants, but none of them excite me the way Pappadeaux does.

Must Try

The stuffed shrimp is to die for. The bacon-wrapped shrimp is also excellent, as is the shrimp etoufee. And if you like asparagus, it’s worth the upgrade fee to get it as a side dish. I used to recommend the fresh-squeezed lemonade, but an experience with an overly acidic one left me with a stomachache and a sour taste in my mouth.

Official web site: http://www.pappadeaux.com/

Chimney Rock is a near-1000 acre park just outside Asheville, North Carolina. The park takes its name from a large rock towering over a river gorge. Visitors can hike 470 steps to the rock or take an elevator up a 258-foot shaft to the top.

We chose to take the elevator to the top since we had our 9-month-old with us. The elevator exits into a gift shop and from there it’s a short walk to the rock itself.

The views are simply spectacular. There’s a river down in a valley and miles and miles of green. We visited in May; I imagine it’s even more beautiful during the fall color change.

Hickory Nut Falls are billed as one of the highest waterfalls east of the Mississippi. We were expecting something grand, but truth be told they aren’t exactly spectacular. Or maybe they are if you’ve never been west of the Mississippi. The falls are long but the water flow is pretty small. The neat thing, though, is that they land in a rock pool that you can play in. Not something I would do with a baby on my back, but many people were frolicking about in the water.

Time Needed

Allow several hours. The park is about 25 miles southeast of Asheville, but it’s on small winding roads so the drive takes a bit of time. If you beat the rush and get a parking spot in the upper parking lot, you can do the rock in about an hour. I’d recommend more time, though, because there are many hiking trails and a waterfall to see.

Must See

Definitely get to the top of Chimney Rock to see the views. Also take the short trail to The Opera Box to get a different view of the Chimney Rock and the valley beyond. If you haven’t seen many waterfalls and don’t mind an easy hike, check out Hickory Nut Falls (just don’t expect Niagara-sized falls).

Official web site: http://www.chimneyrockpark.com/

Chris and I are watching a show on the Pierce Fire Truck Factory in Wisconsin and it’s got me thinking about how they’re such a symbol of the US. There are 33,000 fire departments in the US and they’ve all got trucks. And the best are red, of course. My hometown uses a weird green that’s much more visible, but also just wrong. College Station has white trucks with blue stripes. Very pretty, but still just not the same as a nice red. “Fire Engine White” just doesn’t have the right ring to it.

But anyway, looking at these massive, square trucks, I just think that they look distinctly American. I can’t really explain it, but it’s got me wondering what they look like in Europe. I’m thinking skinny and dorky, like the Mercedes van Dodge imports to the US. Chris thinks this is more likely. Or this, of course.

All joking aside, here are a few modern European fire trucks:

1. Hungary (Volvo)
2. Denmark (Scania)
3. Ireland

They actually look pretty much like our trucks, just a little more aerodynamic.

We just got back from a roadtrip from Houston, TX to Asheville, NC and back. A total of 68 hours in the car and I’ve got to say that the MDX was awesome. It was comfortable, easy to drive, handled the hills well, and got pretty good gas mileage despite my tendency to speed. It was also a good size, having plenty of room for us and our stuff, although I had so much fun shopping that I had to ship some stuff back and couldn’t buy some other things I wanted. But considering it was furniture I had to ship, it wasn’t really the MDX’s fault.

Adam rode in the back behind the driver’s seat and one of us would sit back there with him on occasion to keep him company. The view from the back seat sucked - consisting mostly of the front passenger side headrest - but the headrest was removeable which remedied that problem. The back seat was pretty comfortable and the rear air conditioning controls helped stave off carsickness on all but the most curvy roads.

Trip-o-meter

Average gas price: $4.10/gallon
Average MPG: 28 on highway
Hours in car: 68:05
Mileage: About 2400 (forgot to write down starting mileage)