Monday, 19 Aug 2002
Up about 7:30 or so. Not in a terribly big hurry to get moving, since I knew I wasn't going into work. Eventually found my way down to the exercise room, after a bit, and then came back upstairs to bathe and try to catch up on email. Getting my email under control (at least for one brief shining moment) is something I'd really like to do before we go to the hospital, but I don't know if it's going to happen or not...
After TheWife got up and going and everybody got dressed and everything, we set out on the major task of the day: mini-van shopping. Actually, since it was already pretty much lunch time, first we stopped and grabbed a sandwich. Once we were done eating, however, it was mini-van time, baby.
TheWife really had done her research (this mini-van is going to be "her" car, our current Saturn will become "my" car after we get the second vehicle), and she wanted a Honda Odyssey. Unfortunately, as we found out once we got to the dealership, so does everybody else in America, apparently: we were looking at a two-month wait, minimum. The Honda experience wasn't helped by the fact that we drew a real schmoe as a sales-guy. He was nice enough, but he really shouldn't have been in sales. Anyway, we quickly learned that the procedure was to put down $500 as a deposit, and then they'd call you in two months, once your particular mini-van showed up. We learned that info about 15 minutes into the process, so I'm still not sure why it took us over an hour and a half to hand the guy a check and walk out the door.
During the course of the day, TheWife had also allowed as to how a Toyota mini-van wouldn't upset her too terribly much either. As luck would have it, there was a Toyota dealer right up the road, so we made a stop in there as well. One of the first things we noticed was that they had lots of mini-vans, all over the lot. Within ten minutes of setting foot on the lot, we were back out on the road in a test wehicle. I was sort of amazed that they didn't even send a sales-guy with us, but whatever. We drove around for a bit, and discovered that we both liked the incidentals in the Toyota -- the layout of the instrumentation, the cup holder positioning, etc. -- better than those in the Honda. Since the major factors -- engine size, ABS, etc. -- were pretty much the same, and since it seemed like we could get one of these much sooner, we decided to go with the Toyota.
We drove the test vehicle back to the dealership and started discussing options. Here we had the only sticky point of the whole deal, as it proved incredibly difficult to get a simple option list of out the sales-guys. I think they were trying to prevent us from deciding on something that they didn't have on the lot. In the end, we ended up getting a "Symphony edition" model, which is basically the anniversary or collector's edition of the line. Whatever, it had a power driver's seat and a better radio, and that's what we wanted.
The financing seemed to take quite a while, but there was quite a bit of paper to be shuffled, so maybe things went quick, as these things go -- I've never walked in off the street and bought a new car before, so what do I know. Eventually, everything done finished, and about four hours after we came in, we left.
Our first stop in our new two-car caravan was back at the Honda dealer, to get our check back. Heh.
After that, we came back home and went out to dinner with a co-worker (technically speaking, my boss) and his wife, at a new Tex-Mex place they discovered near the site of their new (still under construction) home. It was pretty good -- much better than any of the other "Mexican" places we've been to around here.
After that, it was home, and into bed not long after. Car shopping apparently really wears you out.
How can any day where you get a new US$30K toycar not be a good day?
Exercise: 24 minutes at L7 'hill' for 8.6 miles