You may recall that I recently purchased a car and had quite an adventure with getting it to me in fully functioning order. Now that my new vehicle has been returned, and everything is 100 percent functional and fixed, I’ve been checking out the new and improved bells and whistles. A lot has changed in the 13 years since I had my last new car.

For one, I can link my phone through the Bluetooth or the USB port, and I am finally hands-free and I’m learning how to use the voice-activated controls. The safety aspect as well as the convenience already make this one of the best features on my new ride.

The person who designed this car really gets me. There are no fewer than four cup holders within easy reach of the driver’s seat, and there is one rectangular tray, which I’m sure is meant to hold something else, but turns out to be the perfect iced tea carton holder.

Combined with a spacious console right in the middle, and this vehicle is a pack rat’s dream. Since we’re still in our honeymoon phase, I’m doing a relatively good job of cleaning out all those cupholders daily and limiting the contents of the console to only the travel necessities, like pencils, pens and 800 napkins.

The dashboard display features a dazzling array of lights and screens, and I’m pretty sure that I might be able to launch rockets with it once I figure out all the buttons. I always prided myself on being a pretty good parallel parker, especially considering that I drive a small bus, but the backup camera has taken my ability to wedge the bus into small spaces to a whole new level. Of course, all these gadgets are just “one more thing to break” and I’m sure over the next decade, we’re going to have a love/hate relationship.

One of the most novel features, though, is the “trip counter.” My old car allowed me to reset the odometer for the trip by pressing a button. This new one has an entire array of trip details. We got a good laugh from the “325 miles to E” statement. The Wonderful Husband spent a few days trying to figure out what exactly was an ever-decreasing number of miles to the East. In the meantime, I couldn’t wait to push the boundaries and prove that I could make it 5 more miles beyond “E”mpty. We’ve been experimenting with the optimum distance and speed to get the maximum MPG that we can. (I’m definitely losing the battle, as I’m a lot more stop and start, and the WH is a lot more slow and steady.)

I was highly intrigued by the clock that counted off the hours of my “trip.” During the first full week that I had the car, I racked up 16 hours on my “trip.” Since I have a relatively short commute of 5 miles, I knew that a lot of that time wasn’t spent driving to work. Instead, it was the hours I spent running the kids to their activities and running short errands around town.

I had two longer trips that week, a run to Hamburg and back for a Scout event, and one away soccer game in Minersville, but even so, that wasn’t more than a few hours out of that relatively large block of time. That also didn’t take into account that a few practices had been rained out and we had one or two evenings off from running.

My second week into the vehicle, I was already at 7 hours by Tuesday. I was starting to realize that I spend a lot more time in my car that I realize, and even though I rarely leave our town and a few surrounding communities, I am on the road a lot.

I started throwing some numbers around and realized that even if I only spend 20 hours a week in the car, by the end of the year, that will add up to 43 days spent driving somewhere. That’s over one month of my year, just spent driving. In comparison to the WH’s two-hour round trip daily commute, I won’t rack up nearly the number of hours that he will, but somehow, mine seem t more aimless and wasteful.

So, I’m challenging myself to start organizing my errands better, so that I have fewer 5-minute runs to the store to grab a gallon of milk one day and a loaf of bread the next. I know that some of this time will be unavoidable, so while a quiet few minutes in the car is sometimes the only time I get to myself, I’ve vowed to start adding a little more quality to the time that I share the space with the family. The radio is going off, and conversation is going to take up more of our time.

When we do get tired of talking to each other, I’ve started downloading some audio books that I know we will enjoy as a family, instead of listening to KidzBop 63 for the 500th time. Of course, this is a problem if one of the kids and I listen to a few chapters without the other ones present, so this plan needs a little fine tuning.

When I think about spending a whole month engaged with my kids, talking about our day, and learning new things together, suddenly, all that time in the car doesn’t seem like such a bad deal.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.