The timing couldn’t have been better: I picked up my brand new all wheel drive vehicle the night we get a lot of crappy snow. I drove to the dealership in my (adorable) Beetle, slightly sliding all over the place. It snowed the entire time we were in the dealership and the roads were pretty shitty by the time we left. I had no trouble driving around, though! I couldn’t believe how awesome the 4 wheel drive made the car in the snow!! It was amazing!!! I didn’t get to drive all that much today – just to work and back – but I did go to lunch away from the offive so that I “had” to drive. 
Awesome!!!
Ali
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My car will be paid off in April. That’s good. My car is now 8 years old. That’s bad. My car needs about $800 of work in order to pass inspection, which is up in April. That’s very bad. Alex has been telling me for a while that I need to think about getting rid of my car because Volkswagens do not age gracefully (at least the newer VWs) and it’ll be expensive to fix. I’ve found that out already, having put over $2000 into my car over the last 2 years because things have broken. I’m thinking that he’s right and it’s only going to get worse.
What’s a girl to do? I don’t have a lot of money to spend on a car and I don’t think that I want to buy another used car that I’m going to have to keep sinking money into to maintain. So, I’m going to try leasing my next car. Since my daily commute is incredibly short – 4 miles round trip – I’m not worried about having to buy more miles for a lease or about going over my miles when it’s time to turn it in. And it will be nice to have a new car with lower payments than buying. I’ve been looking for the past few months and have been having a very hard time deciding what I want. I still love, love, love my Beetle. It’s the most adorable car ever. I really don’t want to go from fun, adorable car to boring sedan or horrible mom-mobile.
I first started looking at Mini Coopers, but I might hold off on getting one until I’m old. I mean, I want to have kids in the next couple of years and a lot of what I read during my Google-ing indicated that car seats don’t fit well in the back. I can hold off on a Mini until the future kids are out of the house. It’s OK.
Then I started to look at hatchbacks. I tend to think that hatchback vehicles are adorable and I love that they are kind of sporty and not sedans. I looked at the Mazda3, which was very cute and scored high marks stylistically with me. I also looked at the Subaru Impreza, which had a unique and cute looking “butt” but the front of the car just looked so sedanish. Also, the inside was just sort of blah. Even though it didn’t do much for me style-wise, it’s still in consideration because it’s 4 wheel drive and I live in the Northeast and there’s about 8 inches of snow outside right now. I looked at the Nissan Versa, which I loved because Hiro on Heroes kept saying “Nissan Versa” and sounded very cute. It is very cute and I can get it with every single toy I could ever want in a car for not much money at all, but I was a little “meh” after the test drive. Something about it felt small or cheap or something.
Last night, we went back to the Nissan dealer and I test drove a Nissan Rogue. I’m in love. It’s adorable. It’s sporty. You can fit a bajillion things inside it. It feels like a sports car on the inside and not like a mini-mini-van. Unfortunately, it’s also brand new for 2008 and the sales guy pretty much admitted that you can’t get a good deal on it right now. When I told him that my time line isn’t immediate – that I can really wait until April, he inferred that I might be able to get a better deal if I hold off until then. Right now, the only thing they have going is a lease on the All Wheel Drive with floor mats and Splash Guards for $249 a month for 24 months. That’s only $20 more a month than I pay now, so totally doable, but I sort of want more toys… The Rogue that I drove last night was the “maxed out” model with a moon roof, Bose stereo system with audio controls on the steering wheel, Bluetooth, and Intelligent Key (which allows you to keep the key in your pocket and unlock and start the car and is super hella cool). It even had paddle shifters on the steering wheel, so even though it was an automatic, you could manually shift if you wanted to and right on the steering wheel like a race car or something. Cool. The sales guy estimated that a lease on that model would be over $360 a month. No freaking way.
So, I’ll wait. I’ll shop around. I’ll keep trying out cars. I’m not in a rush. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a better deal on a Rogue in the future, and if not, I can always lease the base model. I just need to decide how important the toys are. Although, I still think the intelligent key thing is awesome. Totally unnecessary – I mean, you still need to dig out your keys when you get home anyway to get in the house – but cool.
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Filed under Car | Comment (0)Langan VW totally just made my day. They called me up and said that my car was all set and when I asked him what the charge would be, they said, “No charge – it’s a covered repair.” ROCK! I don’t have any sort of warranty on my car anymore, so I don’t know if it’s a global VW decision to just repair the faulty windows at No Charge or if it’s just a Langan thing but either way I’m psyched! That totally just made my day!!!
Rock!! 
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Filed under Car | Comment (0)That never gets old. I love when I’m out driving around and I hear that. Now that it’s BEAUTIFUL out, I can have my windows open! Yay! Of course, I HAVE to have my windows open when it’s warm because my AC is busted – it probably just needs to be recharged (or at least I hope that’s it), but I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet…
We celebrated the awesome weather this weekend by fixing up our porches. I found a “camp hammock” for the front porch at Target. It’s really cool: the frame just pops right open and then you attach the sling hammock onto it. SIMPLE! And it’s SOOO nice to lay on the hammock and feel the breeze come through the screens on the porch. I totally love hammocks – Alex proposed to me on one so I think I’ll always have a hammock.
For the back porch, we found a little wooden bistro set at The Christmas Tree Shop. It’s totally cute – a square wooden table with two wood folding chairs. We also found a little teak side table that we put our little electric grill on. We have to have an electric grill because both of our porches are enclosed. We’ve used the grill twice so far and it actually works pretty good. Alex made steak tonight – it ROCKED. (He’s awesome!) We also bought some mini light bulb string lights that sort of remind me of the lights that they have in the Macaroni Grill. Alex hung them up tonight and they look awesome! I found a navy blue lantern on clearance at Target and it looks hella cute out there.
It’s awesome having all of the windows open in the apartment and it’s great having two porches. We’re really in love with our apartment – finally.
Oh, and it’s 95 days until our wedding!!!!! I’ve finally been able to REALLY get myself motivated. I figured it out that I’ll need to lose 2 lbs a week in order to get to my goal weight by the wedding – so I’m totally back on program with weight watchers and not missing out on the gym. It’s easier, of course, now that it’s not SNOWING. I’m trying to do Core again. We’ll see how this works out for me…
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Filed under Health, apartment, wedding | Comment (0)I hate when it’s been forever since I’ve updated my blog. My whole purpose for having a blog is so that I have the ability to look back at what I was doing last week, last month, last year – whatever – and see what I was doing/thinking/feeling etc at that time. So, I get really disappointed when I suck at updating. And now, it’s been so long and we’ve done soooooooo much that updating becomes an enourmous task!
But enough whining about that.
Let’s see… Well, in the past month, we’ve had a cake tasting and ordered our cake, had an engagement party at my parents’ house, got a new car for Alex, discovered that Alex’s dad is giving us Marriott points for the honeymoon, and ordered our wedding bands. It’s all sooooooooo very exciting!
The cake tasting was a lot of fun! I was so adament that we were not going to pick out or order a cake while we were there, but I had one taste of the mocha cream filling and I was sold! Alex and I really enjoyed the cake tasting – sampling all of the different cake flavors and fillings while sipping on cappucinos was a nice break to a Wednesday. We found a design that we both loved and Alex decided that since he’s not too into cakes anyway, I could pick out the flavor. Since we both loved the mocha cream, we went for that. The price was surprisingly affordable and so we just went for it!
We had a fab time at our engagment party at my parents’ house. Wham and Amy worked hard and pulled off a great party! There was lots of food and drink and everyone had a great time. Alex and I tried to make sure that we kept circulating to socialize with everyone and I couldn’t believe how quickly the night went by – I can’t imagine what the wedding is going to be like! Of course, I was exhausted for the party because of some unexpected car business the night before and hopefully the night before the wedding will find me sleeping more so that I won’t have to battle exhaustion through the night.
Speaking of the car business… Alex went out with his friend, Dave, the night before our party. They took Alex’s car – the 91 Escort that was his sister’s then his father’s and became Alex’s when we were in need in December – to Albany. On their way home at 2:30am the car died. Dave was driving and wasn’t used to the quirkiness of the clutch and it ended up burning out on them. So I got the call at 2:30 to go find them on the side of the Thruway. Of course, I’d only been asleep for about an hour at the time so I was TIRED. I ended up finding them and driving them back to our apartment, only to have Alex realize that he left his wallet in the car. So we drove all the way back out and then tried to have the car towed but gave up after not getting thru to AAA after being on hold for over 45 minutes. I didn’t get to sleep until close to 5am. Got up early that morning to go to Weight Watchers and then kept running all day to find the Escort which had been towed and impounded and get it taken care of. Needless to say, Alex and I were pretty stressed out about it.
We ended up going car shopping the next day and actually found a car for Alex right away. He knew that he’d wanted a Toyota Camry after driving the rental that I had after my accident over December. We found a 2005 Camry for a great price and were able to get excellent financing for it. Alex was super-psyched because the car looked great – it’s black with chrome accents – and was actually a standard. Alex was very happy about that. We were even able to pick it up the next evening. I am sooooooo happy for Alex because this is his first “new” used car bought through a dealer. He is so in love with his car and I am so happy for him!!
My dad had told me a couple weeks back that he’d be able to give us air tickets using frequent flier miles for our honeymoon flight, which we were hella excited about. It brought us one step closer to going on a honeymoon, which is something that we weren’t positive was going to happen. We still had to figure out how we’d pay for a hotel. Alex told me this past weekend that his dad was going to be able to give us Marriott points – enough for a week’s stay in a “category 7″ (five star) hotel. So we are definitely going to be able to go on a honeymoon!!!!! We are soooo excited!! We decided that we’d like to go to London. We’ve got to figure out all the particulars now, but it looks like the honeymoon will be a week in London with day trips to Paris and Edinburgh. We’re SO happy! It’s fun to plan our honeymoon – less stressful than wedding planning. Not that I think that wedding planning is stressful – I’ve actually been having a blast with it! But there are a lot of details to the wedding planning and only so much I can do at a time. The honeymoon planning is a lot of research and daydreaming right now and that’s a welcome change of pace.
Yesterday, we went out and bought our wedding bands! Alex has known for like 3 months which band he wants. We’d gone to Frank Adams jewelers in Stuyvesant Plaza a while back and Alex tried on a ring there that he really connected with. It’s yellow gold on the inside, white gold on the edges, and hammered rose gold in the center. The ring is large (which looks right on his hand) and very heavy. Every ring that he’d tried on after that didn’t feel right to him. They didn’t have the same heavy feeling. He wanted his “one ring to rule them all”. That ring was pretty expensive, though. After I did our taxes, I figured that we could use our tax returns to buy our rings and we’d totally be able to afford the one that he wants. I kept thinking about a piece of advice that Beck gave me – don’t skimp on the wedding rings because those are a forever thing. How could we not get the one that Alex really wanted? I didn’t think that I would find a ring at Frank Adams that I wanted because the last few times we were there, nothing looked right to me. The salesgirl that was there yesterday was awesome. She pulled a bunch of rings for me to try on and I finally found one that Alex and I both really liked. My engagement ring is so intricate that most bands looked odd next to it. A plain white gold band looked too plain, but a band with prong set diamonds looked like it was too much. I found a very thin pave set diamond band that had a single row of small diamonds halfway around. It’s very delicate and vintage looking and looked great with my band or alone on my finger. We’re very excited for our rings – we both want them right now. The order is going in tomorrow and I guess I’ll find out then how long it will be until they get here. Can’t wait!!
And now it is time for me to go to bed. It’s almost ten (gasp!) and I’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn to get to the gym. I’ve been pretty good since January when I started back at Weight Watchers and have lost 17 lbs so far. I’ve learned, though, that I really can’t skip out on the gym and I’m trying really hard to get there in the mornings so that I don’t find excuses not to go after work. I’ve got an appointment on Tuesday with one of the Fitness Trainers (included in the membership) and I’m hoping that he can help me design a good upper body and abs routine. I really hope that I hit my goal for the wedding – I really want to love my pictures!
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Filed under Car, Health, wedding | Comment (0)I made the appointment to meet with the owner of Franklin Plaza a week ago. I was soooo excited to go tonight to hammer out some details for the big day! It was all I could talk about all day and all I could think of at work. I spent my lunch today writing out all the questions I could think of to ask Michael.
I left work an hour early and climbed into my Beetle. I was very excited to be driving it again since I’d just gotten it back from Dodi’s shop the night before. I got into a very stupid accident the Thursday before Christmas – a sign just jumped out in the road and took out the front of my car. Stupid sign. I drove home where I met Alex and got my things together to go to our meeting. We hopped in the Beetle and were off.
When we were just about out of town, the radiator light came on in the car and sarted blinking red. I started freaking out. Blinking red light = no driving the car, according to the manual. We stopped the car and checked the coolant level – it was fine. We got back in the car and turned it on. No light – I called Michael at Franklin Plaza and told him we were on our way but would be a little late. Not a problem. I hung up the phone. Blinky red light started beeping at us again. Check engine light came on. Tears started. Alex told me to call Dodi and see if they were still at the shop – she told us to bring the car right over. I called Michael and cancelled the appointment. Hung up. Cried more. What’s up with my constant crying lately? I suck.
Dodi got us into a rental car right away and her dad explained that they didn’t touch anything electrical with the car, so they’re not sure what it could be, but they’d run a scan on the computer to check it out. He said it could just be that the sensors have to go through a cycle (or something like that). I could tell Dodi felt really bad about us missing the appointment – I was IM-ing with her earlier in the day about how excited I was to go. It’s not like she knew it was going to happen. I feel bad that I was so upset – but lately everything seems like a huge deal to me.
Sigh. Anyway, sucks that we weren’t able to go today. The next time that Alex isn’t on call during the week isn’t until 1/25, so we won’t be able to go again until then… Ah well. I guess I should look at it as a chance to spread out the planning fun for a little while. I just hope that everything is OK with my car!!! I can’t afford to have to fix something major!
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