For those of you who are thinking about buying a car from a dealer (or who have recently gone through such an experience), you might enjoy reading this article from a person who went undercover as a car salesman to find out what the whole process is like. He works first at a high pressure dealership and then at a "no haggle no hassle" dealership. If you care at all about this stuff you might find it interesting. I found it fascinating, probably because I've been spending plenty of time trying to figure out the best way to get a great deal on a car.
I would also like to apologize for the lack of postings recently. Today I attended a wedding for one of my cousins (well, the daughter of one of my mom's cousins, but you know, what's the difference really) and that took up most of the day. The reason I'm mentioning it is that it was not in the style of wedding that I would like. It was rather traditional with a heavy religious emphasis. So, how would I prefer it? Well, obviously, I would eliminate the religion component. Then, my Dad recently told me about a wedding between a couple of friends of his, where the ceremony (if you could call it that) was conducted outside, in the presence of a large group of family and friends. There was no formal dress attire, and there were games like softball and other stuff being played afterwards, so in fact guests were encouraged to wear comfortable clothes. Games and stuff sounds good to me, athough I might take it a step further and require that nobody wear makeup or high heel shoes. That would, however, probably be too radical. Anyway, I would certainly adjust the component of the traditional religious ceremony that makes the female seem subservient to the male, who is often referred to as the "leader" of the family. I really have a hard time accepting that component of those types of weddings.
Where do you stand, if a 1 is a traditional religious ceremony and a 68 is a super-informal get-together of family and friends?
By the way, I should mention parenthetically that my Dad's friends who had that informal marriage filed for a divorce something like 17 years later. So it's evident that there isn't a simple formula for success.
I have a little more than two weeks to buy a car, finish my paper, take care of administrative stuff with Arizona, and a whole bunch of other smaller stuff. We'll see if I can get it all done.
I'm shopping for a car over the next few weeks, and after a few hours of researching, I've targetted these cars for a potential winner (I'm looking for 2000-2002 year cars):
Dodge Neon, Ford Focus LX, Hyundai Elantra, Nissan Sentra DX, Saturn SL2, Toyota Corolla CE, Toyota Echo.
I'd appreciate some input on any of these cars from my legions of readers. Don't be shy now...
I'm back from my three week (plus a few days) road trip with Tiffany. I'll sum it up by saying it was awesome, every single part of it!
I know, I know, you want to get every single detail of the entire trip. Well, I recorded most of the stuff we did on Tiffany's laptop, but unfortunately I don't have that right now. So you'll just have to wait for that beauty to reach your eyes.
In addition, I took a goodly number of pictures during the trip. I would tell you how many I took, but I think it might be more fun to have a contest to see who can get the closest guess. Andy and Tiffany are excluded from this contest because they already know the answer. So, guess away! (Note, these pictures are also on Tiff's computer, so it'll be awhile before they're available for viewing)
Tiffany and I are staying in a motel with a computer with internet access tonight in Calgary. Obviously, I have lots more to say but don't have time to say it now. Suffice to say that I've been keeping track of all the details in Tiffany's laptop. I'm already up to about 15 pages of single-spaced text so far, so don't worry about missing a single one of the unimportant details.