I’m back!!
Thanksgiving was okay. We spent the entire day with Lois’ family. My family gets us for Christmas this year! It was truly an Italian holiday as we started eating at 1 pm with apps, traditional dinner (of 15 items) at 4:00, dessert at 5:30 pm and “supper” of stuffed shells and meatballs at 8 pm. Talk about a feeding frenzy.
Sunday through Tuesday I was in New York City!
It’s funny after I spent 3 years away from Lois 5 nights a week that I really missed her and the boy so much for the 2 whole nights I was gone.
NYC was kudos of fun and I’m actually tired. Not much sleep was had.
Sunday started off on a bad note with a dead car battery in Lois’ car. My co-worker was late meeting up with us because he had a little fender bender in his own driveway. We shook off the bad karma and checked into the Hilton on 6th and 55th by 1 pm.
Sunday involved much drinking with my old college roommate and a sorority sister. (yes, I was in a sorority – a really girly one at that). After the Heartland Brewery, we dropped off Lois at Grand Central, EE left to go home to her 4.5 month old and YJ and I heading out to another bar for football watching. (I definitely owe Lois for dragging her down there for a day then only sitting around and drinking. Sorry babe). I got home close to midnight, partook in a street vendor hotdog and climbed by drunk butt into the gigantic hotel bed.
Monday morning sucked. Nothing like sitting through a seminar on commercial real estate law with little sleep and a slight hangover. Lunchtime rocked as we “grabbed” a pizza at Angelo’s next to the Ed Sullivan theater. It was the best pizza EVER! I hung out on my own Monday night, went to Bloomies, Dylan’s Candy Bar, then the Oyster Bar for dinner where I sat next to Brian Setzer (he seemed like such a nice guy). We had the place almost entirely to ourselves. Then watched the worst football game that I have ever seen in my life. (Pittsburgh v. Miami)
Tuesday, back to the seminar. It was much better on day 2. For lunch, we hit a wonderful Japanese place, something Nippon and had the world’s best Miso soup, rainbow roll and this Sobe salad that was incredible.
We left the city at 3 pm and I was in my garage by 4:05 pm. I totally drive fast.
And what was I driving?!!?
Well. When you are stressed out and overwhelmed with work, money and life, what do you do?
Buy a car?
Sure.
Wednesday night (before Thanksgiving) on my way home from work, I stopped to test drive a new (used – 37k miles) car.
I test drove it. Then ended up going home with it.
It’s a 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid
I sat down early in the week and did the math on how much my car was costing me. Here’s my old car. It got about 18 mpg highway and was in need of some work. Since I drive 300-400 miles per week, all highway, I was spending about $250 per month on gas. I figure that I will spend more than half of that now.
Plus, since I have no money, I just worked out the financing to roll everything into the loan. Probably not the best idea to create more debt for myself, but I feel like it was a smart decision in the long run. I felt a huge relief getting rid of my car (sorry Chad) and felt like I was being very grown up and practical. Hey, I would love to be talking about the new Volvo C70 I bought, but that’s my next car in 5 years maybe.
No bites on the condo yet. We’ve had 3 different people come look. We’ll probably do an open house on December 16th. My mother is having many more people come look at hers, so she should have more success in getting an offer soon.
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I’ve been out of touch for almost 2 weeks and am catching up with my friends. I feel terrible for M and K and hope that our words of support can get them through a rough time. Please take some time and send your thoughts their way. Thank you.
