Ever since Mom died, Dad hasn't been the same. He's getting better, but he's definitely got a muted affect. He's got a group of guys from work that he shoots pool and plays poker with a couple times a week, and they've been talking about going deep sea fishing recently; but you can tell he's lonely. It's pretty sad, so I generally try not to think about him all by himself in that empty house.

Then I got an idea: I like cars, the old man likes cars; therefore we should get an old car and restore it. Sounds like a hell of a lot of fun, and I think it'd be cathartic in a number of ways. Thus began the search.

Originally, we looked at old MGB's; late 60's to early 70's; mainly because Dad had one back in the day. I was surprised at the prices they were going for. It's a game that you can get into for cheap; for less than $5k you can get a functioning model. We also looked at Ford pickups from the 50's, a few muscle cars, other classic sedans, etc. I think we've decided we want to buy something for less than five grand, and be able to spend less than five grand on it over the course of the next year getting it back in shape. The total cap would be 10 g's, so whatever we saved on the price of the car we'd just put into the restoration. We'd do all the engine and mechanical work ourselves, and either get something with a good body or hire someone to do touch up work for us.

We both started getting pretty excited this past week. After scouring the web for classic junk for sale, I'm optomistic that we'll be able to find something that fits our budget constraints, but's still fun to drive. I'd love to get something that's got a little of that American muscle under the hood, but those kinds of cars are so sought after that it's getting hard to find something that runs and doesn't have a weighty price tag or isn't ate up with a terminal case of Michigan Cancer.

So, if you live in the South East and you've got something you're willing to part with or know someone who does, holler at me.