i bought a car!

To my millions of readers, sorry i haven't updated this in a while. Life has been busy. The current top news story, of course, is that matt bought a new car. damn right. and it's pimp. Despite all the talk about making a road trip to get the special edition model of the Mazda3, or paying extra money to get it here in Raleigh, I went to the dealer to look again and the regular S model and decided it wasn't worth the extra money to get all the extra features on the SP model. I thought maybe I was just telling myself that to allay my feelings of selling myself short and not getting the one I've been lusting after for so long. But I really started to feel like some of those features didn't belong on a Mazda3. Extras like rain-sensing windshield wipers, while cool, really have no place on an "economy" car. It began to seem as though they were trying to make the car something it's not, and I didn't want to regret buying it. Also I started to really like the blue one, and I could only get the other one in dark grey. I'll put some pictures up soon, but yeah, my car is very new, very awesome, and very blue. And awesome.

In other news, work is busy as crap. It's been non-stop lately. I remember at my first co-op at IBM I played foosball all the time...often multiple times throughout any given day. It was great. The second and third co-ops there was still some, but significantly less foosball. Since I started full-time I think I've played twice, and that's just sad. Apparently I now measure workload in foosball minutes. I'm a tool.

So yeah, there's not much interesting to talk about despite how busy I've been. The car venture took up a ton of time. I'm pretty much done, except that there's a scratch on one side that I'm making them fix. It's small, but if there are going to be scratches on my brand new car (by the way, there were 12 miles on it when I first got in. sweet.) I want to be the one that puts them there. Anyway, I have a new car now, complete with my own car insurance and a big-ass loan to pay off over the next 2 years. This whole "being a responsible human being" stuff still freaks me out a little. I have a career, insurance, bills, benefits.....a retirement account for heaven's sake. It's just weird. I suppose I'll get used to it after a while. Ok, I'm done. This has just gotten long. Time to watch basketball. Have a good Easter. Goodnight.

this could only happen to me...

so this buying a new car thing was going fine. my car was ordered, and I was waiting for the phone call from the dealer, telling me that my car was in production and would be here in a few weeks. sounds great. but hold on a minute, I actually won't be getting that phone call. Why? Because the Mazda production plant CAUGHT ON FIRE. I'm not joking. The paint line at the plant seriously caught on fire and they have cancelled all production of the Mazda3 SP23 4-door sedan....hey, that sounds like exactly the car I ordered. I found this out last week and I'm still in disbelief. I mean, seriously, do things like this actually happen to other people, or is it just me?

I have a few options. The dealer can still get me the car I want, with my exact specs, because some of them were already produced before the fire. The problem is he has to buy it from another dealer which means I have to pay extra money since the other dealer will charge him extra money to get it. So instead of a $20,500 car with my sweet IBM discount, it would become more like $22,500-$23,000, which sucks. Another option is to find one of these dealers in Virginia or Georgia or wherever the hell they are, and take a road trip to go buy it. Or, I can get the regular Mazda3 S model, which is almost the same as the SP23 minus a few features. I'd be losing out on the dark grey color I wanted, the upgraded sound system, and some random things like rain sensing windshield wipers, auto headlights, and pollen filters for my A/C, all of which I don't really care about. Also, if I decided to get leather seats on the S model, I can't get seat heaters, which sucks. The more I think about it though, the less I think I need all that stuff. There are other colors I like, I can upgrade the sound system if I really want to, and I'm probably better off with cloth seats anyway because the summers in Raleigh are hot as balls and black leather would not help that at all, even though it looks sweet. I was going to get cloth seats in the first place, but the SP23 only came with leather so I got myself fixed on the black leather for a while. I would also be saving myself a few thousand dollars if I went the S model route instead of the SP. I think I can get the S model for about $18,500.

Anyway, this is the part where everyone writes and tells me what I should do, because I can't decide. I decided once. My decision caught on fire. I don't want to make another one because it will probably catch on fire too. I realize there are about 3 people who ever read this blog, so I'm not expecting much help, but any comments would be appreciated. I'm going tomorrow to look at the S model and see if I would regret getting that instead of the SP.

Someone out there really doesn't want me to buy this car....