The good and the bad

Brent and I bought this car! (Since this is a longer blog post, you can click on the "Read more" to finish... that way this post doesn't take up the whole blog page...)


So, we spent a way long time at the credit union going through all sorts of red tape to take out a car loan, but it is now sweetly parked in front of our house. It's a 2005 Mazda3 hatchback (fyi I was a little too lazy to go take an actual photo of the car, so this is just one via google search, ha. But ours looks exactly the same).

It was a bit of an adventure buying a car. We test drove three, one from a dealership and two from private owners. I had never test drove a car before, and gee, it felt very sophisticated. The first car I test drove was a Toyota Yaris, a real small but nice looking car... but it didn't have cruise control, and the speedometer was in the middle of the dash, as you can see in the photo, which felt real unnatural to me!

Anyhow, we test drove the Mazda3 hatchback, and it drove perfectly. The only hitch was that it had a really strong smell of air freshener, like the previous owner had just hung a fresh tree on the rear view mirror. But I just thought it was the air freshener... no biggie.

However, the more I drove... the more the car smelled like smoke! I talked to the previous owner and he said the car was painted about two weeks ago and the painter smoked. Which confused me a bit... because the painter painted the outside of the car... how much time would he spend inside? And to make it smell that strong? Huh.

I ended up taking the car to a cleaner and they shampoo'd out the inside. It got rid of the smell pretty good... fingers crossed it stays that way. And if it doesn't? well I already bought the car... so what's a girl to do?

Regardless of how the car smells, it IS absolutely wonderful to have my own car again. Seriously wonderful. (I tried learning how to drive Brent's car, which is a stick, and yikes. just yikes.)

The other thing that's going on right now: losing weight. It stinks. I've only lost 2 pounds in 20 days. Give me a break :)

But I'll get it. I just need to exercise more frequently... that's gotta be it.