An Interesting Day

Anthony and I had a very interesting day yesterday. We managed to buy a new phone and a new car in the same day. Granted, I bought the phone and he bought the car, but still.

My Verizon contract was up , so I switched to Alltel and he added me to his account. It's much cheaper and I don't have to worry about using up minutes when we talk. For any of you who know Anthony, you know he talks a lot. :) We'd been planning that for a while, so it wasn't any great surprise. I was annoyed though, I had planned to transfer my old number, but apparently Alltel isn't allowed to sell in the Detroit area. Some bizarre FCC regulation apparently, where they're limited on the places they can offer service. Apparently if they don't have a store in that area code, they also can't transfer a number from there. (sighs) So, I have a new cell phone and a new number. If you know me, and didn't get my email about it, let me know, I'll make sure to get the number to you. The phone wasn't exactly what I would want, but it will work. It's a flip phone, which doesn't greatly excite me. For whatever reason I never feel like they fit against my head well. Maybe it's because I have such a small head. But, this was a best of them, and it is very nice and shiny. It's black and silver and has a camera, which is kinda nice I guess. I highly doubt I'll be taking many pictures though, it has decent resolution, but it'll annoy me that it isn't a "real" camera. Plus, it was a good price, and I like Kyocera. That's what my old phone was and I never had any problems with it.

After the Alltel store we went to the Honda dealership. We had been talking for about a year about Anthony getting one. His truck is great, but it's bigger than we need, and uses a ridiculous amount of gas. It was perfect when he had to drive in the West Michigan snow to get to school and work, and he couldn't count on the roads being plowed in time. Much less practical in Lansing and even more impractical when we're in Chicago. He spent weeks restoring the Fiero so we could use that, but it has been cranky and has been requiring additional work. The original plan was to get the truck ready to sell. It was what we were going to do yesterday actually. That was until Saturday night on the way home from a wedding we went to, the Fiero decided that it needed a bit of a strange shimmy when it was driving at 70, and pulling to the right whenever he accelerated. Apparently it was due to a rather serious problem, which would have required some rather difficult welding, which would be time-consuming and/or costly. So, we went to look at Hondas. Apparently they were completely sold out of brand new ones, because everyone decided it was a good idea to get smaller cars because of the gas prices. They did have two used ones though, and one was very nice. We took it for a test drive and absolutely loved it. So, we spent 6 hours at the dealership negotiating for it. Well, I should be honest, Anthony did the negotiating. And holy hell is he good at it. They dropped their price by more than 100 dollars a month for payments, and upped what they would give him for the truck by about 4,000. All it took was him saying "you'll have to do better or I won't be buying a car" about 8 times. The poor sales guy had to run back and forth to talk to his manager, but finally, they agreed to what he asked. Which was for them to pay off the rest of his truck and make his payments about the same as what he paid on the truck. So, the truck is gone and he's only paying 5 more dollars a month. The Fiero will be sold in the next few weeks, so if you know anyone who really wants one, let me know.

The car is fabulous. It's a 2004 Honda Civic EX sedan. It's a really dark silver color, with a black and grey interior, CD player, a moon roof, has 19,000 miles on it and is in nearly perfect condition. Plus, it's a manual, which makes me incredibly happy. I get bored driving automatics. It also has incredibly good gas mileage, about 35/40 miles to the gallon, which is easily twice what the truck was getting. So, while somewhat unexpected, it was very nice that everything worked out so well. No more paying 50 dollars to fill up the gas tank. No more trying to jam our stuff into a tiny car. No more vehicles trying to break. Reliable transportation, great gas mileage, lots and lots of room in the trunk and backseat and it looks great. What more could you ask for? It is so nice to feel like everything worked out well for once. We've had a string of really crappy luck in the last six months and it finally feels like it's starting to turn around. One of the best things about the car though, is that it's almost exactly what we would pick out if we had all options available. Well, as far as a Civic.

Given an unlimited budget, I'd want either a Maybach Exelero (more pictures) or a refurbished coupe from the late 1930's or early 1940's. With all the modern conveniences, of course. The Exelero is incredibly sweet looking, what the Batmobile should look like. Or at least what Bruce Wayne would drive to the opera. There's only one in the world, and I'm entirely sure it's more car than I could handle, but it is gorgeous and fast as hell. And the coupe is a little more within reach, and would suit me quite well I think. However, in the meantime, the Civic is perfect.

Catching Up

As usual, this time of year is pretty hectic. I still haven't sewn the skirt or the apron yet. But, I did get Erin to come up and help me take in my shirts. I now have 8 or 10 shirts that I need to do. The plan is to work on it this afternoon, but we'll see if that happens.

Before the shirt pinning, Erin and I registered for wedding gifts. And no, Erin didn't leave Kyle for me, I was just helping out. After Target and Bed Bath and Beyond, he was pretty burned out on registering, so I went with Erin to do Marshall-Field's. We had an amusing Mohawked guy help us out a bit and we managed to do a pretty good job getting quite a few things done. I nearly cried when she registered for a Kitchen Aid stand mixer. I want one so bad. I tried to convince her that she could register for two and give me one. But, she was afraid Kyle and I might get into a knife fight over them when they open gifts at the brunch on the sunday after the wedding, so no luck there. She tried to tell me that I could always get married and register for one myself. But that's probably dishonest if you do it just for the mixer, right? I'll probably break down and buy one once I have the money, I highly doubt I want to wait until I get married, cause that could be a good few years from now and I want a mixer NOW.