Vehicular Acquisitions

I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but bachelor time is over, as Laura has ceased her globetrotting. She immediately got down to business, saying that now she was back, she wanted to get a car. I pointed out to her that she already had a car, the big, gold hunk of crap that's rusting away in the driveway. (And when I say hunk of crap, I emphasize both 'hunk' and 'crap'. The only good that could come from its existence would be to catapult it at your enemies. Back to the story.)

"No, a NEW car," she said. "I know what I want and I want you to come with me to the dealership to help me with the salesman."

From that brief bit of dialog, I have two observations.

1) She just gets back from several weeks of travelling, and the first thing she wants to do is get a new car. That cemented it for me: Laura isn't a teacher. There's no way could afform such a lavish lifestyle on that pay; she's either a jewel thief, an assassin, or an Asian soap opera star.

2) She wants me to help her with the car salesman? When I went to buy my car, I came out of the deal with a 180 month loan at 27% APR, a warranty that included protection from any damage caused by pirates dragons, and I somehow forgot to buy tires.

I played it cool on both counts, though. I continued to play along with the teacher sham, and I went to the dealer with her. She certainly didn't need my help as I could only ask "This car is made of metal, right?" and other such inanities. I did come in useful for one thing: I told her to play hardball with the salesman. She actually took that piece of advice, and after much wrangling over the financial details, made the salesman go ask his boss to knock $50 of the price. That was pretty great to watch. And as a result of doing most of the thinking for herself, she ended up with much decent payments and a modicum of self respect, two things I somehow missed when I bought my car.

Conclusion: the hunk of crap is out of the driveway, and it's been replaced by a sleek, stylish buggy that I wouldn't object to too mightily if it happened to run me over.

Just to let everybody know, I'm going to be in freaking Mexico for the next several days, acting questionably while trying not to incite an international incident. I will most certainly not be updating Goulash during that time. I expect everyone to live through it.