Countdown to Extinction

Well, we just returned from a long unproductive day of car shopping. It seems that for the past few weeks, we have spent every minute of our free time -- plus stealing several hours of NON-free time from more important things -- trying to find our first good car. By "good" I mean something with fewer than 160,000 miles on it with an engine that doesn't sound like a boot in a washing machine, all the external mirrors are still atached to the car, the trunk opens, and prayer that it won't explode when you get on the freeway is not absolutely necessary (although its never a bad idea).

In any case, after squandering several weekends already encountering very unreliable cars and even more unreliable car salesmen, after Whitney spent countless hours hunting down leads on the Internet and running loan calculators every night after work, after I went from being a month ahead to being a week behind in my coursework -- we were determined. WE ARE ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT A DOUBT GOING TO DRIVE HOME IN OUR NEW (TO US) CAR TODAY!!!

So after a loooong morning at a local dealership, we took a 45 minute drive to a dealership in a neighboring city to see a Hyundai that seemed very promising (i.e., not a ticking time-bomb, see above), and we were very hopeful that this would be the car. The manager had called us that morning to tell us that he would be getting it ready for us to look at it and we had reviewed the Carfax, which looked really clean. So when we finally got there and talked to the sales people, we were almost positive that this would be our car, and we were on the verge of celebrating as we drove out to the lot to give it a once-over. The whole thing went over great... except the fact that they had already sold it to someone else 10 minutes before we arrived...

Utterly dejected and forlorn, we did what anyone would do - we bought two rakes and a bottle of wine... oh yeah, and a shovel. Anything to redeem the day.

P.S. The rakes are to prepare our barren yard for some much needed professional aeration and seeding. The shovel is to bury the bodies of a few used car salesmen. If you've read this far with anything like an empathic heart you know very well what the wine is for --- to drown our sorrows.

P.P.S. "What have you been driving if you don't have a car?" you ask? A good friend has been letting us borrow his 1989 Honda... the odometer reads 249,000 and counting and every time I look at another mile roll by on the counter, I think the following:

"Dang, Sameer, remember Megadeath's album Countdown to Extinction? Man, I pray that when this thing finally does explode on the freeway that my brain doesn't start playing "Symphony of Destruction" in my head. I hate it when bad speed metal (forgive the redundancy) gets stuck in my head. Actually, I think I'd rather have *actual* metal stuck in my head, which is I guess what would happen if this thing DID in fact explode right now..."

P.P.P.S. Okay now I'm rambling. And we haven't even popped the cork on that wine yet!!!