New(ish) car

This week I got a 2005 Honda Accord, grey exterior, grey leather interior. Heated seats! Sun roof! CD player! Total upgrade from the 1997 Accord.

In all the interactions with the salesmen (and they were men), it was just me, without Husband. This is significant because I kept wondering if they were trying to take advantage of me because I'm a woman.

Over the course of 10 days, I did manage to get them to bring the price down, so I'm happy. Mainly I'm happy to finally be done with looking at cars and just having a nice car to drive around in.

One of the other places I looked at, I went with Husband. At that big car lot, the salesman kept trying to talk to Husband too.

Husband's reaction was "Hey, it's her car, it's her decision, I don't need to be part of this." And he left to run errands. It was rather annoying to have the salesman keep talking to or about Husband. I wanted to say "Hey! Talk to me! It's my car, not his. So back to me. Especially since Husband's not even here."

So now I have a new(ish) car. And I get to park in the car port, because now my car, the 2005 Honda Accord, is the better and more expensive car, over Husband's 2000 BMW. hahahahahaha!

Shopping for Condos and Cars

Yesterday Husband and I went to see a 2 bed/ 2 bath condo in downtown Atlanta, at Twelve Centennial Park. Husband wants to live in a highrise in the downtown area, not trendy Midtown, nor upscale Buckhead, two areas seeing many new condo towers go up.

The unit we saw was about 1200 sq ft (including balcony), about half of the 2100 sq ft (not including patio and yard) that we have now. We saw about 3 units: facing SE towards the city, facing SW facing Centennial Olympic Park, and then a furnished unit, which gave us an idea of how much space we would have to move around once we had furniture in there.

Atlanta may not have a river, lake, or any other body of water, but it certainly has the freeway. I can imagine sitting out on the porch, watching the never ending stream of cars go by, especially at night. Husband likes the sound of the cars, of the feel of being in the city, so different from the quiet of the suburbs.

Given the softening housing market and possibility of interest rates dropping even more, now is a great time to buy. On the other hand, what would we do with our current house? We would probably rent it out.

We walked around the neighborhood, to get a feel for it. It's next to a MARTA stop so getting to the airport would be easy. A W hotel/condo is going up next door, it's in between Georgia State University (my alma mater) and Georgia Tech, and there's a possibility of a grocery store being built in a few years across the street.

Interestingly, 70% of the units at Twelve are one bedrooms. Guess that tells you what kind of people live there.

From hip, downtown condo, we went out to the northern suburbs of Roswell and Marietta to go car shopping. I think it's time to retire my 1997 Honda Accord for a newer 2005 Honda Accord. Yesterday was about test driving, not really about buying. Which was good because I didn't find the one I really liked in my price range.

In the end, we went to Harry's Farmer's Market in Marietta (possibly even the one that Alton Brown films segments of Good Eats at), got some kabobs and sausages, and went home to our suburban house to grill out. Certainly if we lived in a condo we wouldn't be able to do that.

All this is speculative, but it's certainly whetted our appetite to see more condos. So I went on line and contacted several more condos.

Come Monday, we'll see how many e-mail us back.

What my car says about me

Found today on MSN.com: an article that describes a person's personality, based on the car they drive. http://msn.match.com/msn/article.aspx?articleid=8406&TrackingID=516311&BannerID=544657&menuid=6&GT1=10287

I drive a Honda Accord and here's what they had to say:

The car: A Honda Accord or other sensible sedan
What the car says about its owner: Someone who drives this practical vehicle is most likely educated and intelligent, Dr. Orbuch says. “This driver probably likes discussing politics and is very well-read and mature,” she explains. “People who drive these kinds of cars don’t take big risks in life, but hey, that mentality has served them well up to now!” What you may find pleasantly surprising is that the driver probably has a lot of savings socked away. “This kind of person has invested his or her money well and may very well be enjoying a cushy lifestyle, but is just smart enough to know that a car is a horrible investment,” she explains. Ultimately, he or she cares about value, not flash.

What the car says about its owner’s love style: Its owner will most enjoy someone who likes to converse about life, Dr. Orbuch suggests. “He or she thinks that support, friendship, and honesty are essential to a good healthy relationship,” she says. Additionally, he or she probably doesn’t mind spending a lot of money on a mate—“especially when it comes to travel, fabulous hotels, and great restaurants,” she says. The thinking is: “I save when I can to splurge when I want.”

That's rather accurate.

Car Problems

So, Brother-in-law is in town to run in the Peachtree Road Race, the world's largest 10K race. We took 2 cars, Husband's family in his car, Brother 1 and me in mine.

7 miles down the road, we pulled into McDonald's to get breakfast. As we pulled out, my transmission died. Couldn't believe it. 2 weeks ago, just had other work done on the car, and here another major problem!

So we had it towed home.

Brother-in-law made it to the race and came in at 39 minutes, beating his goal of 42 minutes.

Just looked up the Blue Book value of my car. It's trade in value would be $2000 in the condition it's in now, and $3,075 if it were in excellent condition.

We were planning to get a new car, but in October, not now.