Today, a 3 year relationship comes to a close.

I'm driving my VW Beetle for the last time. It's a strange feeling, mind you, to know that I'm not going to be seeing the sexy lines of the dash, hearing the putter of the engine, watching little kids smile and point when they see my car, and mostly I think I'll miss watching people beat the living crap out of one another upon seeing my slug bug blue, no slug backs, Ow.

I'm not going to miss the horrendous blind spots in the back corners of the car, though. No sir. Not that.

Overall, though, I'm going to miss the cute little car. It's just that Lindsay and I have outgrown the little thing. And it's waaay too expensive for what it is -- a subcompact car.

I think I've talked about this before, but when I picked up the car, the interest rate and monthly payments were much higher than I had anticipated, and though I've tried refinancing a couple times, I hadn't had any luck. The rate was stuck at about 14%. Yeah. Ouch. Might as well have bent over and thrown it on a credit card.

On Friday, in preparation for getting a new, larger vehicle to replace the VW, Lindsay and I took it to the carwash. Goodbye bugs on the hood, oh how I will miss you! Um. No. So, basically, we cleaned the crap out of the outside of the car. Then we were spent.

On to Saturday. I emptied out most of what needed emptying and vaccuumed the insides of the car with the trusty little Black & Decker CarVac. Then Lins and I headed to the Saturn Dealer to test drive the VUEs.

As soon as we pulled into the lot, the skies opened up and rain poured down on us. We're talking monsoon season rain. Pearl Jam Tour 98 rain. It was insane. So we test drove the VUE in about 8 feet of standing water. We both liked it very much, regardless of the weather.

10 minutes after we got back, the skies were blue and beautiful and sunny and warm. My bad.

We had them *tear* check out the VW so that we could trade it in. They loved the little car, too. The used-car-calculator guy drove it for a few blocks and looked it over and came back to us 10 minutes later with numbers. According to all his sources, he should give us around $10,000 for it, but he really liked the car, so he'd give us $11,200. Um. Yes. You have our business. *sigh* *dreamy car dealers that don't try to screw you and are actually nice to you* *blink*

Yeah, I know! How much does that rock? They bumped up their offer that much because they liked the car!

Also, Saturn was running a $1500 discount on 2002 VUEs, which, btw, were selling like hotcakes. Plus my sister that lives in Colorado works for GMAC, so we get a Family First discount, too. Oh, how that rocks. All told, we'd be getting about $5000 off on the car. So we put our money down on one that wasn't quite what we wanted, with the dealer promising to locate us one with the package we wanted.

They ran our financing and guess what? We got a 6.1% rate. How much more will the monthly payments be, in comparison to the bug? $5.

So, in 3 years, my credit liability has decreased so much that my rate goes from 14% to 6.1%. Yay me! Yay Lins! Yay Saturn!

I called the insurance people to see how much more a month it'll be for the VUE: $5.

$10 more for this stacked vehicle that looks pretty cool and has tons of space. Gee, I think I'm happy. Hee.

They found the one on Monday, in Rochester. Here's how it works: the car we put money on would be dealer-traded for the one in Rochester with the package we want. We'd then buy that one. Easy enough, right? Well, yes, easy enough, as long as the Rochester dealer knows if they've sold it, or in the process of selling the one you want, ooh ooh ooh, honey. So Monday was spent in limbo, as I tried as hard as I could to develop an ulcer. Bleed, you bastard stomach, bleed! I don't think it happend. Drats.

Yesterday, around 2, my guy (Johnny K!) called me up -- the Rochester dealer has our VUE and will trade. We are good to go.

Rock.

Here's what our VUE has: It's a silver AWD6 with *deep breath* power sunroof, anti-lock brakes, 6 disc in-dash CD player, head curtain airbags, floor mats, roof rack and mud guards.

So I'm getting all of that for $10 more a month than my bug.

Oh, there will be pictures, friends. I bet you can't wait.

Thanks for shopping,
Eric