We got a new car!

Eric and I have been talking about getting a new car for several months now. With me going to school next month, I'll be driving another 90 miles or so every week, and we figured now was a good time to get one. We've been taking the gas-guzzling Pathfinder on our long trips since Eric's other car is a stick and I can't really drive one. Plus, with a three-year loan, I'll be out of school by then (hopefully), and we'll be in a better financial position to buy a house.

Anyway. We narrowed it down to either a Kia Optima or a Ford Fusion.



Kia Optima


Ford Fusion

I wasn't too excited over getting a Kia, but Eric showed me the pics of the Optima. You have to admit, it is a hot little car. And it's fast(ish). It has a 200-HP engine, where the Fusion has a 160 I believe. And the Optima was torquey, so it had a LOT of get-up-and-go. It was fun to drive, but larger than I'm used to, so I felt like I had to peer over the steering wheel like a little girl just to see where the hell the front end stopped.

So we stopped at a Kia dealer and checked out an Optima that they had. We test drove it and I noticed next to the MSRP sticker an additional price sticker that this site calls a "bump sticker." They were charging $1995 for undercoating (holy WTF), $70ish for nitrous-something-or-other (not the stuff that makes cars go ZOOM), and $50 for mud flaps. They added this all into their own MSRP. On every car! We talked to the sales guy, and I asked if it was already on the car, and he immediately said we could take that off the price. Hmm. Then he said there was an additional $1k in rebates. So, in my mind, he really only took off $1k from the price of the car. It was the first car we looked at, so we gave our info and left to take a look at the Ford dealership.

We originally were interested in the Focus, but all they had were two Ford Fusions. One was out of our price range by about $2k, but we test drove it anyway. It was a purdy car. :) And lots of gadgets. Sun roof, fog lights, Microsoft Sync built in (a cool little techy thing). I didn't want to waste the salesman's time though, and I told him we liked the car, but that I just wasn't sure they'd be able to come down enough in price. Which was true. But he got us to come inside to talk. We weren't at all interested in buying a car that night, and we made it clear, but they really wanted to deal, and they took $2k off the sticker, but we had to get home to the doggy. All this took two hours. Should have been my first clue.

The next night, we went back to the Kia dealer first, but the car we were looking at was pulled up next to the dealership building (obviously not a good sign ;) ) and we were told that someone was thinking about buying it, but that we could stay and wait, and that "it'll be about 10 minutes"... (please). We got the saleswoman's card and left.

On to Ford.

Eric and I came up with a new price for them to consider, we haggled back and forth, and we got to a price we were mostly comfortable with. Then they throw down the sales sheet. Surprise! $400 customer service fee. Total bullshit! Eric asked them to take it off, and they refused, saying it was "standard for all car sales." Bullshit! So then we got down to the financing. We had looked online prior to coming in and saw that they were offering either $2k in rebates or 0% financing for 36 months. What we didn't know is that they included the $2k in rebates in their final price, so they only offered 5.9%. He said we could add in $500 to the price and get 1.9%. This would put us over what our limit was.

At that point, it was me doing the haggling. Eric was ready to sign the papers, but I was still fuming over the bullshit! customer service fee, so I refused to give in. I said they needed to figure out how to take off $400 and still give us 1.9%; however, they refused to budge. So I shrugged, got up, said something like, "This was more car than we were originally planning on buying, so I understand that you've reached your limit. Sorry, but we just can't do it," and thanked them for trying. (Pffft.) Honestly, I felt relieved to get the hell out of there. We had been going back and forth for four(!) hours, and I was starting to feel like they were trying to take us for a ride.

On our way back home, about ten minutes later, they called Eric and offered to take $200 off. I said, "Nope! I'm done." I don't know what they said, but Eric's like, "My back's against the wall! I've gotta listen to my wife!" And then they decided they could do $400. Honestly, if Eric hadn't been so rosy-eyed over the car, I probably would have walked regardless. I'd be willing to bet anything that if we let them stew over it for the night, they would have offered better terms. Oh well... We now have ourselves a shiny, pretty, black, and luxurious (to me) Ford Fusion!

(Okay, it's not really luxurious. But it's NEW! And it's techy!)

I'm all signed up for classes

I had signed up for all my classes during orientation, but there was one class that was full--the most important one for the semester, because it's a prerequisite of one class, which is a prerequisite for another, which is a prerequisite for another--I'm sure you get the drift--and it's only offered during the fall semester. I asked my advisor what I could do, and she said that it was at classroom capacity, so the only way I would get in is if someone dropped (unlikely due to the importance of the class) or if someone didn't pay their bill. So I was kind of freaking out.

But my advisor e-mailed me this morning telling me she got me in. WOOT!!!

I'm taking 15 credits: calc-based physics II, intro to ethics, engineering graphics (AutoCAD basically), differential equations and intro to environmental engineering (the class I just got into). Differential equations and physics will probably be the hardest, but I survived multivariable calculus, so hopefully differential equations won't be too difficult. DiffEq is based on calculus, and I understood calculus well enough.

I visited Omaha last week and had a lot of fun (other than attending my grandfather's funeral :( ). My immediate family and I went to the Stuhr Museum, which brought back a ton of memories. I haven't been there in probably 10 years. Damn I'm getting old. My sister and I and a couple of friends went out on Friday night, and I proceeded to get a bit tipsy and offended someone I had just met. Sigh. Oh well, he took it well enough. Actually, he picked up my glass and said, "We're cutting you off!" My sister and I also decided our other two friends were taking too long in the bathroom, so we drank their beers and took pictures of it. Stupid drunk people!

I'm beat!

Just had the Clemson orientation. It was full of information that was great for someone who had only been in college for maybe a year, and for someone who planned on staying on campus. :) But I did get some good info, although Eric attended the "Parents" portion (LOL) and it seems he learned things that would have been great for me to know (financial aid, co-op stuff, etc.)! Sigh.

I did find out one GREAT thing. There are two freshman classes that I haven't had yet, or at least the classes I've taken so far won't transfer directly, so because of that, my status is "freshman" AND I can't really declare a major. Apparently Clemson has a sort of weed-out process where they place all engineering students into a "general engineering" degree, and they won't change it (in my case, to environmental engineering) until you've proven yourself in the first year. Anyway, I learned today that because of the plethora of computer classes I've taken, they've found a way to consider those as transfer credits. SO, my status is now "sophomore" and I get to declare my major. WOOT! I'm thrilled. I'm so sick of taking intro classes!

So. Funny.

Maybe you have to be a horse person to see why this is so funny, but I laughed so hard at this, it brought tears to my eyes. I was reading a forum and came across this post:

"Saturday my horse was acting very fresh and naughty around the barn. Instinctively, as I left the cross ties to ride, I grabbed a dressage whip, which I rarely use. I led him into the arena and was turning to close the gate behind me when, out of the corner of my eye, I see him toss his head and begin to play up (which generally involves half-rearing at me, then dashing away as he aims a half hearted kick). I nonchalantly applied the whip across his chest to let him know he had pushed it far enough, and he was so suprised he let out a HUGE fart. Then put all his feet on the floor, and followed meekly to the mounting block."

Lightning!

I saw THE BIGGEST lightning strike ever! It couldn't have been more than 1/4 mile away, and I happened to be looking right at it out the window. It was a complete freak chance. You know how if you count "Mississippily" (a la Ross in Friends), you can supposedly count how close a storm is? Well, there was no counting. The lightning strike and thunderclap (and it was loud enough to make me jump and *gasp*) were instantaneous. I even saw width in the thing. Feeeerrrreaky!

I've been complaining for a while now how we don't seem to get storms down here much. Guess that was my payback.

Orientation on Wednesday!

I don't know why, but I'm excited for orientation. I'm dreading going to school with people that are 10+ years younger than me (that 10+ really makes me sad), but I'm happy to find out what my class schedule will be like, and thrilled that school is only 10 minutes away instead of 90. It's been nice working at home and all, but I'm really getting tired of it. The only person I talk to on a regular basis is my husband, and no offense Eric, but I'm kind of bored. :D

On a walk today, Jaiden and I ran into a loose Shih Tzu whose owner was close by. She came closer and barked. Closer again, bark bark. I sat Jaiden down, she crept closer, growl bark, tail wag, bark bark. Seemed like she wanted to say "hi" so I started walking toward her, and she took off the other way, whimpering frantically. It was kinda hilarious. I told the owner that my dog used to be friends with a Shih Tzu, and then realized how weird that probably sounded. Why didn't I just say "he used to play with a Shih Tzu"?

Inception dream

I was watching Inception for the second time, and it reminded me of a dream I had after the first time I watched it. There's a part in Inception where Leo's character is training someone about the dream stuff, and he says that in a dream, you won't be able to remember how you got there.

So anyway, in my dream I was in an orchard, doing some gardening (this was a few months ago, while I was deep into learning about gardening, so it was always on my mind), and I walked toward a table that had all my tools. For some reason or another, I wondered to myself, "How did I get here in this orchard?" And I had no idea how I got there, yet I refused to believe that it was a dream. It was very strange.

I also have dreams within dreams on a fairly regular basis. It's weird.

Small Jaiden update: I increased the glucosamine/chondroitin tablets he's been taking, and he seems to be doing much better. :)