Preludes And Nocturnes

Jim is currently somewhere up in the air about halfway to China right now. He’ll be gone for four weeks, and I may have already started counting down until he is home.  But at least for the first 1/3rd I hope I’ll be okay.  Leone is in town right now, Julia arrives tonight and stays until Tuesday, and Melly arrives Wednesday to stay with me for a week.

I’ve mapped out cleaning plans, babysitting plans, work plans, and emergency calls to my mom plans.  I’ve also recorded seven half hour episodes of Toopy and Binoo.  Not because Malcolm needs more of these for himself, but because I’m a leeeetle less likely to go weird if I can at least circulate through a few different episodes.

Thankfully I’m only teaching one class right now, so that is three days a week. Still a busy work schedule as it is a shorter summer session done in six weeks, but not quite full time.

I’ll go ahead and call this a lucky one too: but I’m not pregnant this month.  Yeah, big surprise.  Of course I’d take the extra work of being on my own this month while preggers if it actually meant I was pregnant (duh) but I’ll take the chance to count it lucky that I can scoop the cat litter and won’t be ill while Jim’s gone.

What I need to work on while Jim is gone: eating well.  I will eat “healthy” since I know that will help me stay sane, but I have this crazy thing when he’s gone and I just eat one thing for a day or two.  I have to fiddle about with what I give Malcolm (rather over-the-top picky stage right now), so then I end up doing something like making a fruit smoothie and eating only fruit smoothies and toast for two days.  When Jim was away earlier this term teaching (er, he taught two super-fast three week classes for May so he was teaching eight x 3hrs per week and staying over rather than doing the 1.5hr commute) I had two days when I ate cheese, crackers, and salsa for five meals.  What?  Whole grains, light aged cheddar, veggie packed salsa!  I then had a side of broccoli (I actually just made up a whole huge pot of broccoli and then ate that as a meal) and fruit smoothie for breakfast.

Today it has started already.  I made a fruit smoothie for breakfast, and then had it for lunch too.  They are just so handy: 3-4 kinds of fruit, plain yogurt, soy milk, greens, protein powder, flaxseed.

Moral of this story?  Who else can some and stay with me?  If you are here, I’ll cook for you and everything.  I’m so much better cooking for others.

I’m burned out right now.

So the Jetta had great room, but non-optimal milage.  And when driving to/from k-town up to five times a week… I think this might sink the VW for us.

The Elantra was awesome for me, but it was that little tiny bit too small for jim’s head-room.  To get in there he has to kinda fold himself in half.

The Honda was good on room and good on milage.  I like it - and right now it is the only one withot a strike.

Next stage to all this is that cars come out in the summer/fall.  So we’re running out of 2011 stock and I’m being told that in my trim requirements there are 1 or 2 cars in western canada for some of these.  The elantra only has a white one left (nah), the Jetta only a black (nah) or a demo in white (upper trim package, over 10K in kilometers, $3,000 off takes it to $19K), the Honda is in blue (nice).

But I really like the Honda 2012 and lots of colours to choose from, no real deals though.  The 2011 Honda comes with $ back and 0.9% financing.  The other financing is up at 4%.

Bottom line, I can’t rush.  It is a big decision (duh), and I can’t just buy something because they are selling out.  As I said to the fellow yesterday “I trust someone in this town will have a nice little $20k car to sell me in the next month or so” - right?  Right now I need a car for the next three weeks and then I’ll actually have a month without any overlap so we can just use our one car.

I might have a look at a few more cars.  But any of those three I mentioned above were certainly good. More input TOTALLY WELCOME!

Okay, I really hadn’t thought this was going to be my whole day.  What I’m pondering right now is still the question of new vs used, and then some variation within the new category.

Overall I’m wanting a 4 door smaller sedan.  I’ve looked at some larger sedans today, but I don’t think they’re really in the running.

Used.

Ford had some good looking used 2008 cars for under $10K.  They had decent milage on them, some warrenty remaining, and tended to be a bit more upgraded trim than I’m looking at in the new cars.    I am really pondering this idea of just being able to buy a car outright.  I’m very worried about buying used, how much life is left in the car, yadda yadda.

Two best were:
Pontiac Wave for $10k
Pontiac G5 for $9K

Hyundai had a totally pimped out 2008 Sonata with minimal milage (1/4th of what you would expect) for $20K.  It was a $40K car originally.

Honda had a bunch of 2008 with moderate to ‘normal’ milage on them for the $15K+ that I think I’m not interested in with the level of driving that has already been done to them.

New.
Ford - the Fiesta can’t really measure up as the other dealerships I looked to smaller and mid-sized sedans.
The three makes I’m looking at are Hyundai, Honda, and VW.  All three I was looking at one level of trim above the base (some power options and A/C)  and they all seem to be coming in around the $20K mark. These include the Elantra, the Civic, and the Jetta.  The Jetta is the highest priced around $22K, the civic is coming in the lowest at $18K, and Elantra right in the middle at $21K.

For some added pondering, I looked at a super sweet new Sonata at $27K, the diesel Jetta at $26K, and a new 2012 Civic at $20K.  The Sonata is the silliest of the mix since it is not as good on fuel.  the Diesel Jetta and 2012 Civic are the smarter ones since they both are actually fuel-saving beyond their above mentioned counter-parts.

I think I’ll take Jim tomorrow and put him in a couple and see what happens.

Test drove the Ford Fiesta this morning, and it will have a hard time winning this race.  It drove fine (fine is fine), but once I got what I needed with it the price came in at 19K.  For a few K more I test drove the Hyundai Elantra nicely decked out - bigger car - better handling - more adult ride.  At first I felt like it wasn’t fair because I should drive the Accent to compare apples to apples.  The Elantra is the next size up from that class.  But the price difference really was under $2K.  So at that point why wouldn’t I go for the elantra?

The Fiesta felt a little like a uni car.  Like my hatchback Accent I got in 2000.  I’m just having lunch and then I’ll head over to Honda and VW.  The Hyundai guy is running the numbers for me as I also drove a demo Sonata (technically classified as a larger sedan than the elantra).  It was 5K more, but seems I might get a little deal due to the demo status and it has 0% financing right now.

I’m looking for a new car.  Or a used car.  I dunno - the last used car I bought was in Uni and it was a 1986 Ford Escort with some mysterious disease that made it die on me in the middle of intersections, so I’m a bit worried about used cars.

But I think buying a 2 or 3 year old car could make sense.

I’m also in a tiff because I don’t want us to have two cars, but the writing is on the wall.  This week I’m borrowing my grandpa’s 1997 (yes, you read that right) sedan because other wise I’m carless and can’t get M to daycare or me to life.  I’m in a non-real-transit kinda of town.  Jim and I managed for four years with just one car, but that is over this summer.

So I’m waffling between CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP just get a base model hatchback (it will just be for me going to/from work and taking M to daycare, we’ll use the Tucson for family trips and weekends) and maybe actually getting myself a real car.  Not that I’ve ever gone high-end, but I certainly want A/C in the world of 100+ summers and big enough to get M in and out without crying.  I also want safe.

My list currently has a brain dump of friends and Edmunds that includes the following:

Jetta
Ford Fiesta (good reviews, I’d never think Ford otherwise)
Ford Fusion
Hyundai Sonata
Mazda 3
Hyundai Elantra
Mini cooper
Honda Fit
Kia Optima

No research yet, but have been mentioned:
Civic
Focus
Malibu
Altima

Any input?