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Friday, June 23, 2006
You know, it's been a while since I posted about buying a green Beetle, and I missed doing that, so today we...bought a green Beetle.
 But the new one is a 2004 instead of a 2000, and doesn't need a couple thousand dollars worth of repair work, and doesn't have 115k miles on it thanks to my old commute from Oakland to Silicon Valley.
Here's what happened. The car started overheating and freaking out on the way home from the airport when I picked Dennis up after Bonnaroo. I was: not amused. My first aid attempts were useless, so I took it to the dealer for diagnosis, because I suspected we might trade the car in if the diagnosis was bad (with a comped diagnosis on the trade-in), and I could always get it fixed elsewhere if the news wasn't dire.
It turned out to mostly be stuff that one would expect to start breaking around the 100,000 mile mark, but it was pretty bad and I crunched the numbers and based on what the car was worth, we decided to throw the repair money towards a down payment instead if we could get a good deal on a newer Beetle.
The first Beetle was pretty great until now. It had far fewer problems than my two previous cars, and most of the things that came up were taken care of by VW, so we were in complete agreement that we wanted another one.
The car broke on Monday, we took it in on Tuesday, and just got the new car today. I actually managed to do most of the stuff you're supposed to do, like lining up financing in advance and walking out after an hour of negotiations and letting them call me back with a better deal the next day (which they did), so I think we only got a little bit screwed (it's still buying a used car, so it seems foolish to claim to not have gotten screwed, but they didn't get away with anything outrageous).
Yes, I know we're having a baby and therefore every force in the universe should be pushing us toward an SUV. I like little cars! It's a good child-wrangling car, too. Even though it's a 2-door, the ceiling is so high that not-especially-tall people like me and Dennis can semi-stand in the back with the front seats flipped forward and have full access to the baby seat. Maybe we'll get the convertible version next time, when the kid is older and can tell us if it's too windy back there. I'd hate to have to put doggles on a baby.
I have mad skills at packing that car, considering the amount of cargo space available. Seriously, last weekend I had a big desk in there, and a floor lamp. The desk was broken up into three pieces, but still, it was a whole desk in a Beetle.
I surprised Dennis with a new desk when he got home from his trip. I'd had my eye on it at Ikea, but it has been out of stock for a while, and then I snagged it cheap off craigslist from someone who was graduating and leaving town. I didn't do the greatest job putting it back together; I don't think I was supposed to have a big piece left over. Eh, we're moving in a month and a half, and I'll fix it when I take it apart again to get it upstairs.
Now I have to decide what to put in the car's bud vase.
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