Le Car est Mort

The days have been just packed.  I enjoyed two day long meetings down at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren this week, which was awesome.  Well, the part where I heard them test-firing the guns was.  Everything else was somewhat less fantastic.  It ate up all my time, and driving back and forth ate up even more time, and my other project is stuck in the mud, and whine whine whine.

Also, Stella has passed on.  After just over ten years of faithful service, my Saab 900S is no longer viable.  Panamanian running lights, so to speak.  Her transmission is shot, and it would cost twice her blue book value to repair.  So she's headed out back like Old Yeller.

Stella was my first car, and most of the work of buying her actually fell to my parents.  So I've never bought a car myself, really.  I'm concerned I'm going to get taken.  So I'm doing all sorts of research, and trying to figure this out without taking a lot of time - I'm picking up a rental tomorrow, and I'd rather not be in the kickin' Hyundai Accent longer than I have to be.  Though I should keep an open mind - Ryan & Bethany have an Accent, and it seems to be working out for them.

I figure I need something that I can car-top my sailing kayak and load up with my groceries.  It would be nice to have something with a tow hitch, since I already have a hitch-mounted bike rack.  so I'm spending lots of time on the Carmax website.  And USAA, figuring out what kinds of loans I can get.  Super fun, mostly because I love have to deal with things where I have no clue what I'm doing.