Funny Story for your New Year

Hi, and Happy New Year!

Hope your Christmas was a happy day! We're trying to do as many big things in as short a time as possible, i.e. moving, remodel the kitchen, remodel the bathroom, celebrate the holidays, the microwave dies, the dryer dies...continually try to fit more stuff into a smaller house with less space than before...the list goes on!

So let's add to that: our 1997 Chevy Malibu shows symptoms that it is ALSO on its way out.
OK, we've had it 11 years, for Pete's sake -- it has had a good life! Car symptoms and Internet research tells us that a "big fix" is coming soon, added to a few smaller ones, so...do we put $2500 into fixing an 11 year old car? Or put that money into a used newer vehicle...we could look for one that also has 4-Wheel-Drive for the snow around here...you can see where this is going.

So for the past few days/weeks, we have ALSO been heavily researching Used 4WD Vehicles. It is a good time to buy, since it is the last week of the year, etc., etc. (And maybe you know how ridiculous we are when we research things. The time and energy we usually spend researching may even EXCEED the time we own the item...? It's a little embarrassing.) Anyway, it was a miracle that this happened as fast as it did. Yesterday Frank ends up driving this home:


It's a 2004 Toyota Highlander, with 39,000 miles on it. V6 engine, 4WD, 7 seats possible (an adult's knees are up a little high when they sit in the very back, but, well, you know...) Frank loves that haggling game, so I let him play to his heart's content...after 4 rounds of back-and-forth, he gets it down to a pretty good price, we think.

(If you noticed the "Title" of this post, you might have expected a "Funny Story." There may be one person in this world who thinks that the Whitesells Buying a Used Car constitutes a Funny Story. For the rest of you, don't worry: there's MORE!)

The process of buying a used car from a dealership is more of a painfully long ordeal than any of us could have imagined. Frank is there for HOURS. While he is there, yesterday, waiting on bank approvals and registration and DMV notifications to switch plates and paperwork, a car pulls into the dealership lot.

There are a handful of men in the car, who pile out. Their sobriety level is a little questionable, but they make it clear they are there to buy two cars.

They open the trunk and there is quite a bit of paper cash in the car. They will pay cash for these cars, thank you very much.

THEY go through a similar process that Frank is going through, switching license plates over, and the DMV is notified. Because they pay with paper cash from the car, it is a LITTLE faster than Frank's process, so they finish and leave.

A few minutes later the dealership gets a phone call. When the DMV was notified that these license plates were changing cars, they are the license plates of some men who very recently robbed a bank! The police already know the plates and descriptions of the men they are looking for. The DMV notification also automatically goes to the police, so those license plate numbers alert all kinds of people. After the men leave the car dealership, they stop to fill up with gas, and the police pick them up at the gas station.

Sometimes...the system works. :)

Happy 2009! Love, Kari