Wiiiii!

Greetings from Amazon.com.

We thought you'd like to know that we shipped your items, and that this
completes your order.

Yeah baby! It's on its way. And what do you know, just in time for the week of PTO that I always take after Thanksgiving! Man, am I smrt or what? :)

Sorry, it's been a busy week. I've been thinking about replacing my car because it let me down on my last trip - nothing against Cincinnati, but I'd rather choose when I spend the night there. So my bank offers a service that will price cars for you and negotiate deals with dealers. Well, I'm ecology-conscious, so I wanted to get a hybrid. I'd already built one online just to get an idea of how it works.

My bank calls me back and says sorry, those are really popular, with gas prices soaring and everything. Most places have lists, and none of them will talk to us - you'll probably have to pay more than MSRP to get one. They suggested I build one online and request an online quote, so that, you know, I don't go there in person and have them talk me into something bigger or uglier.

So I do this, Wednesday, I think. I get an auto-reply, yeah, we got your request, we'll send you a quote. But I don't hear back. Thursday, I don't hear back. Finally, today I get a phone call (I screen my calls, so I really just got a message) saying hey, call me back. I write him back, we trade e-mail, he sends me a quote about $80 under invoice, but only in stock. (??) And he asks when I can drop by. I stop by this afternoon, figuring we can drive someone else's and then I'll get on the list, etc., etc.

Well, there's one on the lot. Right color, has the navi system, right there. Except ... it's been sold. Oops. But wait, there's actually two on the lot. And the second one is also the right color and has the navi system. So I take it for a test drive. (For me, a test drive is a formality. By the time I get to that step, I've already done all my research, and I know exactly what I want. I'm looking for deal-breakers, and pretending that they need to sell me the car.) As it turns out, when we get back and start on the paperwork, in that time, someone else showed up from 150 miles away to look at a hybrid - apparently he'd called before either had been claimed. (Suxor.)

I didn't have half the stuff with me I needed. Fortunately we got some of it from my proof-of-insurance card, and I knew the financial stuff from poking around at loans online. So now I have a new car. And to think, only because they just happened to have one on the lot that was what I wanted. If I'd waited another hour, no car.