GUESS WHO GOT WHAT

Well the who is easy. ME! The what is even easier. A NEW CAR! Yippee. I'm totally thrilled, too.

I began thinking about a new car several months ago. It was kinda like when you begin thinking about giving the guy you're with the ole heave ho. It may not be the exact right moment at first thought, but eventually you know things are sort of pointing in that direction. That's how I felt about looking for a new car. I wasn't quite ready five months ago, but bingo. 

Once the thought was implanted in my mind... boom. The idea of giving my old car the boot became stronger and stronger. Next thing you know it's four months later and time to get really serious about figuring out which car I wanted as a replacement. No easy feat, I might add.

Plus... come to find out, new cars are really expensive! OMG. Talk about sticker shock. In addition... it took me at least a month and a half to bond with the fact that full sized sedans are no longer even an option anymore. HUH?? WHAT'S WITH ALL THESE NEW SMALLER CARS WITH EVEN SMALLER INTERIORS? Not to mention, so much shorter in height. Like where the hell was I when all these new small designs came onto the market. Especially supposedly full size luxury automobiles. NOWadays full size apparently means: way tinier interiors unless of course you REALLY want to lay out major bucks and hook up with a $70,000 car or something. Which basically means...

The days of my being able to afford a pretend luxury car is way over. Which naturally then sent my search into a whole new direction. Even some pre-owned cars were priced out of my league. Therefore I began looking at, test driving, etc. several different makes/models. Not only that... I had to also become feature friendly given you kinda have to now practically have a pilot's license to figure out the display panel. Oh man. Don't even get me started on the keyless entry bit, btw. Soooo crazy.

In the meantime, while I had some time to kill before an appointment with one salesman, I decided to mozie on in to the Toyota dealer and next thing you know I test drove a brand new Avalon and within the hour, good bye other dealership, hello new one. It took several hours to negotiate the price I wanted, the trade-in I wanted, etc. etc. and by 5:00 that afternoon whammo. I drove away in a beautiful, totally spacious, comfortable brand new car. Hal-le-lu-jah! Of course the fact I settled on a silver car with black interior, still now, absolutely floors me since ordinarily I would NEVER have made that choice. But whatever. I'll live on the edge.

Besides, when I kick the bucket altogether I bet my kid will give a thumbs up to this color choice. Oh yeah... no time was needed btw to negotiate any sort of features to include since this car is pretty much fully loaded and thus has just about anything you'd ever want. Well... other than an ejection seat, maybe.

Which reminds me: navigating your way through all those features?? Don't even ASK. My first clue that things were going to be a challenge was when, five seconds into driving off the lot with my new purchase, BOOM. A HUGE voice came out of nowhere alerting me I had new email and wanted to know if I wanted to ignore it or read it. Are you kidding me?? Since when does THAT sort of alert ever occur? My car can now speak to me about my email?? Talk about hearing voices in my head! Geez. Just what I need.

Anyway... care to guess how many times I've been BACK to the dealer to have them answer my 425 questions regarding all the fancy schmancy features? Let's put it this way: I've owned the car for five days. Hence I've been back to the salesman five times. See a pattern here? All I can say is thankfully by now I've pretty much got a handle on what does what. 

Oh yeah... the best part was that I drove away with my new car four days before I even paid for it. Now THAT'S service, alright. Turns out I bought it on a Thursday, told them I'd have to get monies into my bank account which could take about three days since there was a weekend coming up. Hey... no problem they said and kindly told me: Not to worry. Here. Take the car. It's yours to keep. And we'll just deposit your check in five days, on Tuesday. UH... REALLY?? WELL... UH. OKAY. GEE. THANKS! By the way... I highly recommend your doing business at this place.

Anyway the bottom line is that I've just gotten what could possibly wind up being my very last car for ever. Well, maybe not. But I'll tell you this. Whenever I DO buy my next car, I'm pretty sure it'll have to be a Toyota truck given I'll be way close to 80 years old and I have NO idea what kind of driver I'll be by then. Meaning: in 10-12 years I totally had better have as much protection surrounding me as possible.