new ride

Well, as you may know from reading Chris's blog, our old Saturn wagon was totalled a couple weeks ago. Everybody was fine, but the car, alas, was sent to Auto Heaven. We were given a small amount of cash with which to get another car, and had a very short window with which to procure said new ride. It was a stressful time car shopping, especially given our budget (which we supplemented with some savings, but still, it wasn't much) ... since we aren't sure where we'll be a year from now, we didn't want to be making payments on something, so we were determined to buy something we could afford outright. Anyways, long story short, our most awesome friend Adam spent a lot of time helping us look for cars, then even went out of his way to meet up with us in Jax last monday to do some serious car shopping. After looking at quite a few lemons, we finally found her... she wasn't what we had in mind, but I think she's just right now that we've had her for a week, so we're pretty happy with our purchase. It's a '99 Acura Integra, dark green, 2-door with leather seats. Very clean, very well maintained, and she drives well, too. Once we got the seats all adjusted it's pretty comfy, and we did a couple little upgrades... added keyless entry and a security system yesterday so we feel safer having it parked out in the ghetto, and since I had a tire stolen once on the old car, when I saw that this car had wheel locks sitting in the trunk just waiting to be used to replace some existing lugnuts, we were quick to swap those out. I just read that this exact vehicle was the most stolen car for 2005, and Savannah's pretty big on the car-jacking so I guess it's probably money well spent.

At first I thought I wouldn't be too thrilled with a sporty car... I mean, this one even has tinted windows, a moon roof, and a spoiler... but now that I've gotten used to driving it, I love it. Not to mention I'm thrilled with the little features of the keyless entry... like the doors automatically lock when you start the car, and unlock when you turn it off, and the cute little "beep" noise it makes when I lock it... very much fun. Not to mention this is the first car I've ever owned that wasn't a tan station wagon with a broken indicator light and a broken lighter port (I've had two different vehicles, different makes, that fit those exact descriptions). It feels like a new era for the Skeenes.

I keep meaning to snap a photo of our new ride, but I keep forgetting, so uh... don't hold your breath.