118 - So frustrating

I started the day in a good mood and ended the day wishing I had invested in a punching bag. But that's work... and I won't go into it except to say that I hate revising contracts.

So I was thinking... last time I checked, the Kelly Blue Book trade-in value of my car was about equal to the value of my loan. And that got me to thinking about a couple of other things... it's the end of the year which means there are supposedly great deals to be had... lots of factory incentives and such... so I could potentially reduce my monthly payment... and the IRS also added a deduction for the sales tax on the purchase of a new vehicle. I'm all about the deductions this year.

That said, I love, love, love my car. She still makes me giddy. But. Trixie is an RX8 and she's a little different. She uses premium gas and only gets 18 mpg, so it costs me a lot for the privilege to drive around town and look pretty. She's pretty low to the ground, so if I so much as encounter a puddle... I worry I might drown in it. I have a 6-speed... but it's not as much fun to drive as it sounds like it would be because I'm always surrounded by other cars. In fact, sometimes it's a pain in the ass because I'm shifting all the damn time. All those people who inch forward at the light? I've quit. It's not worth pushing the clutch in, shifting the car into first, inching forward, pushing the clutch in, and putting it back in neutral... not worth the effort unless it's at least a car length... She uses more oil than a regular car because of the rotary engine, so I have to be mindful of that and check the levels once a month (I don't drive very far... if I did, I'd do it more often). People sometimes try to race me -- usually dicks in those overpriced Nissan Z's -- and I can't count the number of times jealous people have pretended not to see me, so they just pull over on me... I've started driving far more defensively since I've had Trixie... or more truthfully I've started to block people if I think they're going to cut me off... if they don't pay attention, I make them pay attention. And still... I love Trixie more than a person should love a car...

So anyway, all this in mind, I'm looking at cars online. I look at the Mazda 3, nice financing terms, but it seems spartan compared to what I have. I'm not sure about the pep, but I'll consider it. So what do I end up doing? I end up ogling a Pontiac Solstice. It's about $5k less than an 8, plus there is a $3k cash incentive. Awesome. Plus I'm a member of a credit union so there's an eensy additional GM discount available for that. Cool. And the dealer has a $250 coupon on their website. I'll take what I can get. So I go to KBB to verify my trade-in value... what the smurf? It's dropped by about $1,500 since last month? I go to the Black Book valuator and it screws me over even more! Now I'm $3,000 upside down. This does not compute. The only way this will work is if the dealer makes an exception like they did when I traded my Accord in; they increased the trade-in value to something reasonable without rolling it into the loan. So I talk to the dealer... what? It's been discontinued? So this dealer no longer sells new ones, they only have a used one, same age as Trixie but with double the miles. Nope.

My cousin sent something to my work email address this morning... which isn't anything out of the ordinary. What was unusual was where the email ended up, which was in my 'junk' email folder... yeah... it's actually called the 'junk' folder. They use filters with certain parameters to determine if the email is spam or not, and for some reason this particular email ended up there. The email address she sent it from was the same, there wasn't an extensive recipient list, no attachments, no curse words... Nope... what I think set the filters off was the title of the email, which was 'CHRISTmas' (just like that, capitalized and everything). Now, I'm not a churchy person, I don't like being preached to... but I do have a belief system, and frankly, I don't think there's anything offensive about God. It bothered me that religion was even a parameter when I supposedly live in a country that was founded on religious freedom... because what they're saying is that an email about Christmas is as offensive as.... things that are actually offensive... It rubbed me the wrong way. What doesn't.