new, used car

So I took a vacation day today to deal with getting a new car. With 3 kids and no car I can borrow for more than a day or two, there just wasn't a lot of time to put it off any longer. (although I am so grateful to my dear friend Jay who let me use his car today while he rode his bike in the 100 degree heat to teach his classes at UT ) I've been researching cars for weeks and today I went and test drove the ones I was interested in.

I ended up buying a 5 speed 2002 VW Jetta GLS with 32K on it. I learned to drive on a 5 speed VW Rabbit, and although I take a lot of teasing about my driving skills, for some reason I've always been pretty good at driving a manual as opposed to an automatic (I'm also a really good shot -- with a gun. Random skills I can't really acount for. Go figure). And I had forgotten how much fun it is to drive a zippy 5 speed German car. Lots more fun than driving the Ford Explorer I've been driving the past two years.

The whole experience went relatively smoothly. I was pretty comfortable being firm with the sales guys at the dealership and I insisted on the carfax thing (thanks blog readers!)

The kids seem to like it, and I'm hopeful it will do the classic VW thing and run like a top for ages...