New car, new classes, and no time

It’s been a crazy couple weeks with not a lot of time to be online!

The engine of my mommy-mobile crapped out last week. It started shaking violently and making scary noises. My van was a gift from the in-laws, which was lovely of them, although it’s not like they went and picked out a vehicle we would like and gave it to us….my MIL wanted to get rid of the van because it had problems, so they gave it to us. So as nice as it was to get a free van, it has basically been a money-pit for the last three years.

This latest engine crap-out was the last straw for me, so we decided it was time for a new car. 

The thing that made it difficult was that during the time we were shopping for a car I was without any way to get around town, and my house isn’t in walking distance of anything, which means the girl and I were stuck at home all day every day. Kind of made it difficult to take our time and really weigh options for such a big purchase.

Anyway my parents, who are awesome, decided to lend us the money to buy a new van so we wouldn’t get stuck paying interest. I normally would go for a slightly used one to cut down on cost, but my dad insisted that we needed a brand new vehicle with the warranty, etc. So we headed out to navigate the minefield of car salesmen. Which is not a fun thing for me, because I completely suck at negotiating.

Everyone kept telling me I needed to basically put on a little skit, pretend to walk out, etc. That’s not me, and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do it convincingly, so instead when I figured out which dealership I wanted to go with, I just leveled with the guy and said "look, I could do the thing where I walk out, pretend I’m not interested, and have a little battle with you for a lower price, but I’m too honest of a person for that. I’m interested in buying this particular vehicle and you want to sell it to me, so let’s work something out so everyone is happy." And then I pulled out a paper where I had written down my research on what other people in my area were paying for the same car, explained that I knew the average was factoring in the people who didn’t know any better than to pay sticker price, so I was looking for a price a few hundred below the average. And I got the exact price I was looking for. Go me! 🙂

So the whole car-buying process took up several days of my week, which happened to also be the first week of fall semester.

This semester is the first one where I’m attempting to go full-time. So far I think I’ll be able to handle it. It helps that I’m back in all computer classes now so I’m actually interested and want to do the homework. Last week was a bit of a challenge, though, with so much of my time taken up with going to car dealerships, researching prices, etc.

The other little wrench in my school attempt is that the book for one of my classes wasn’t in when I went to get my books before class started. They ordered it and said it would be in by last Wednesday, which was cutting it pretty close since it’s an accelerated class so being without the textbook for half a week is a big disadvantage. But I was prepared to wait until Wednesday…..and then it didn’t get in until Thursday night. As in, they called me a few minutes before the bookstore (which is 20 min from my house) was going to close.

Thursday was also the day my car crapped out, which meant that I wasn’t able to get there and get the book Friday….and then the bookstore was closed all of Labor Day weekend. So I finally got the thing last night. After already having to complete 3 assignments and a quiz for the class. I honestly had to guess at the material on the quiz and assignments because I really have no idea what was in the reading, but thankfully I did ok. At least I should be on track this week….although I’m crazy busy so I’m not sure when I’ll fit in homework. It’s good busy now, at least.

So that has been my life lately. The other thing that has been going on is that I’ve felt a lot closer to God just the last few weeks. I’m not sure how to really explain it, though, so I think I’ll wait until I’m less tired and less busy to write about that!