Let's try that again...

One and a half days to buy a car? No problem!!!

This is exactly what I had to do. My insurance company, blessed though they are, only paid for my rental for three days after my check was cut. Read, CUT and not RECEIVED, so while the check was cut on Wednesday, I received it on Friday and had to return my rental on Saturday at noon. So I literally had to buy a car with only the idea of a down payment to offer. I was full of anguish indeed. And mighty, mighty pissed off that I had to go through a whole car buying rigormorole.

Friday morning, I waited for the mail which thankfully comes very early and as soon as I had the checks (one for my wrecked car and one for Tess' car seat) I deposited them into my account and then ran off to try and buy a car that my sister spotted online only hours earlier.

Initially, I had two cars in mind. The Honda CR-V which is big and pretty and the Mazda 3 which had come very highly recommended from a lot of people who have them. I really wanted a manual transmission but I knew that would be next to impossible to come by and really, I was in no position to be picky.

The night before I had gone to Honda to look at the CR-V but after noting with some dismay that they are horrendously expensive and also in very high demand (forget finding a leftover '07, they didn't even have any '08's in the lot...and I checked with two different places), I decided to go to Mazda the following day and check out my other choice, the Mazda 3. My sister called me the next morning to tell me that the dealer right by my house had a few '07's left so I got there as fast as I could to try and nab me one.

When I got into the dealership I was immediated grabbed by a saleswoman who was more than happy to take me for a test drive. I mentioned the particular car I had seen online and she went to fetch it but returned with a different car, an '08. I asked what had become of the '07 and she said, "Well we still have that one, but it's a manual transmission."

And a choir of angels sang in the background.

I asked to see it and she brought it around and oh, it was so very pretty I wanted to weep on the spot. I drove it around for awhile and I was in deep, deep love. It was the Grand Touring edition which meant it came with many fine things like leather interior, six cd changer, moonroof, Lojack etc.

After only about, I would say, three hours of negotiations I had it. That night I signed all the paperwork and drove my new beauty home.

Here's to another five or so more years of car payments:










The only other thing I should mention is that the reason that I am not blogging much is because I still don't have a computer at home. After being wracked with a virus, we replaced the tower with the tower from our old computer but that isn't working either because it is not detecting our modem so it's all been very frustrating. With any luck, we will have it fixed by next week or so.

Until then...it's blogging on lunchtime at work so keep checking in.