Blog Number 306

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

So the big news is that we now have a van.  It is incredible how powerful of a weapon it is to walk out on the car salesman without budging for before noon the next day he had called me back and told me that he had approval to accept our offer for the 2006 Kia Sedona.  The wife was out test driving other Kia's when I received the call so she quickly stopped and headed home very happy.  After we bought the 8 year / 85,000 mile bumper to bumper warranty and you added on the 6.25% sales tax and you subtract the $10,000 we had from the insurance company for our old van and you through in the Texas inspection tags and license plates (the dealer took care of all of this for us) we ended up having to finance about $8,000 at roughly 6%.  So we have a $250 payment for the next 36 months but hope to pay it off before then.  Although it is time consuming to buy a car even when you walk in with an agreed upon price, the kids did great.  This is due in part to my stern warning that their behavior at the dealership directly determined where we ate dinner that night.  One small threat of taking them to eat Chinese (which they both hate) and they were angels for the 90 minutes it took for all the paperwork and we ended up at Mcalister's (kids eat free on Tuesdays and Thursdays).  Typically there is an argument about who gets to sit by dad so to stop this I told them that whoever wanted to sit by me had to ride home with me in the Buick and not in the new Kia.  All discussion ceased and their loyalty to me evidently can be bought for only the opportunity to ride home in the van for 5 miles.  With Father's Day around the corner....oh well.
Well the coffee is done (I can smell it from clear back here in the bedroom) so it is time to go but I still have time for...

Random Bad Quality Pictures With My New Cell Phone

On the way to work each day I pass this horse ranch.  There have been a few ponies out there lately but this picture does not show them.  Hey, its hard to drive and take pictures at the same time.  Granted, I was only going 10 miles per hour when I snapped this one as traffic was a little bad.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon