Tuesday Morning

We've reached the end of a wonderful three day holiday weekend and now it's back to the grind. I hope you all had a great time celebrating the "start of summer fun." Around here, Saturday was kind of business as usual as Ben was working on his sermon for a Sunday morning preaching engagement. Sunday, obviously, started with church --Ben was brilliant of course. The rest of the day was just kind of a lazy time. The weekend did include some car shopping -- a difficult task since most dealers here are closed on Sunday and holidays. That did not deter us. On Sunday we looked on the Chevy lot (they were open). Not much there of interest, though they had the most pre-owned (they used to call those "used cars") of anywhere we looked. On Monday we headed to the east and south ends of town and hit several dealers -- mostly closed and without much exciting inventory. Then we hit the Honda dealer. They had the prettiest little 2004 Civic in RED (Ben called it "arrest me red.") and the salesman stated that it gets about 40 mpg. BUT it didn't have some of the bells and whistles I was looking for -- power everything and cruise control. So off we went to the Toyota dealer (Boy, they were proud of their stock!). They were open and had free food, so we gobbled down pulled turkey sandwiches and baked beans. While we were en route and looking at the over priced Toyotas, my mind and hear kept going back to the Honda. I decided that rolling down windows by hand was not beneath me. The car looked great and only has 25000 miles on it and the gas mileage sounds great (especially at 3.50 + per gallon). So we headed back to talk to the salesman. "What about adding cruise?", I asked. We decided to test drive it while he got the answer to that question. When we started it and drove off the lot, the low fuel light was on so we didn't go far -- who wants to run out of gas? It handled and rode really nice and I was falling in love. We got back and found out that cruise could be added (for a price of course). Then there was the dreaded "Credit app" process. I had already prearranged financing, but it never hurts to compare possibilities. He came back saying that they were quite sure that they could beat my other quoted rate, but they couldn't finalize that offer until the banks were open on Tuesday morning --DUH--I rather expected that answer. So they put a hold on the car and will be calling me today. Before we left, we got them to put a little gas in the car -- actually they gave us five bucks and we put gas in it. That experience was another whole story, but then we headed out onto the interstate to see what kind of zip or lack of zip we were buying into. Let me tell you this little baby car has PEP! SO -- the upshot is that I sit and wait for a phone call from them about financing today. If their offer is better than what I have as a backup, I will come home tonight with a "new" car. If not, I will wait a day or two for the paperwork on the other loan and complete the deal. Am I excited? YES! Is my entire future happiness dependent on this deal? NO! Am I counting chickens before they hatch? NO. I have cleaned out the old Chrysler for its final ride in anticipation of the new Honda, but I can always drive it home again if need be and keep looking. Updates later. Here's hoping!