My new job led to the next change in my life which is that I have moved.  I no longer live in Keyser.  I have moved to the “big city” of Fairmont, WV.  Fairmont is about 20 minutes south of Morgantown.  Mike is happy because now he only has to drive 20 minutes to see me on the weekend instead of an hour and a half.  It is much nicer living in Fairmont than in Keyser.  Fairmont does not have a lot of entertainment itself, but it does have restaurant choices.  Plus, Morgantown is within distance for a night on the town if one is so inclined.

What else is new?  I got a new car back in May of 2008.  I now have a Mazda 5, which is a mini-minivan.  The lease on my Mazda 6 was set to expire this October and I needed a car that has room to transport my poochies.  The Mazda 5 has more cargo area with the third row of seats down than a station wagon.  So far it has worked out well.  I like it.  It’s red.

The most recent and biggest news and change is that Mike and I got engaged this past weekend (Saturday, July 12, 2008).  We’ve set the date for the wedding as October 10, 2009, which is a Saturday.  We’re planning on getting married in Morgantown.  We are going to have my judge (the judge I clerked for) perform the ceremony.  Beyond that, we have not made any other plans.  I intend to write another post with more details about the proposal and pictures of the ring in the next week or so.

Life’s been busy lately, as you can see, so I haven’t had time to work on the site a lot.  I’m going to try to add more content, but I can’t promise much as half of my house is still in boxes.

I try not to jump into any purchases, Katherine can vouch for that . Whether it be a new laptop (3 months to pick one out and decide on it), a new hat, a pair of jeans, which kit airplane, or which car. Websites, reviews, emailing, talking to other owners, staring, pacing back and forth, and phone calls. If there is a “collectors” edition and a “normal” edition of a DVD that i want, I’ll put them both back on the shelf after looking at the boxes and then go research them online to figure out which one I want and weigh the costs. Or, in the case of jeans, if they aren’t JUST right they go back on the shelf. And then Katherine gets angry at me and hits me with them because we’ve been to 30 stores looking for jeans and i still haven’t found any.

ANYway. My point, in all that rambling, is that i am picky and i don’t impulse buy (very often) even when i need to buy something.

This weekend Katherine asked me what i wanted to do, and she then suggested we go test drive cars. Something I hadn’t gotten to do yet with the cars I’ve been researching. I am looking for a small car that is good on gas, and has enough power to get through the mountains and hills in West Virginia. After a couple months of looking around I settled on the Toyota Yaris, Hyundai Elantra, and the Honda Civic as possible choices. 3 brands with very good reputations, one of which (Toyota) I’ve owned for 10 years and had no problems with. After researching more, I narrowed it down to first the Yaris or the Elantra. The Civic, while a good car, has a higher starting price than the others with the same features. After further research I pretty much eliminated the Yaris. While the user reviews of it are positive, the features to price isn’t quite there. When configured the same as the Elantra (using ‘popular packages’) the Yaris comes out $1000 more. I’m also not a big fan of the “Center Mounted Instruments,” I want them right in front of me. The rear seat is slightly larger in the Elantra as well, not that I carry extra people very often. With all that in mind, consumer reports didn’t give it a recommended buy tag, where the Civic and the Elantra do have Consumer Reports recommendations.

So, after grabbing a hot pocket for lunch we headed up to the dealership to test drive an Elantra. My main concern was that I wouldn’t be comfortable in it. I drove a Hyundai Sonata to Michigan last summer, and loved it, but it is the next size car up. Luckily, the room in the Elantra is very comparable. I took the GLS trim for a spin and took it threw its paces, and headed back. Then we took out an SE, which Katherine drove (being that she can drive a manual much better than I can). Not too much difference between how they handled, but it had a couple things I was hoping to get in my next car, like radio controls on the wheel. Oh well, not really worth it.

Went in and talked to the guy. At this point I was happy with the car, and I wanted to know actual numbers. That means credit checks and all that. Fun. It went back and forth a couple of times. Finally I told them to run the credit check and made another lower offer, on the car to take it off the lot that day (under the condition that I got to see the final numbers). At this point I started getting a little nervous. This was a big purchase, and even though I’ve researched it for months now, I still felt like I was rushing into it. Nothing had been signed yet, so I could still walk out. The numbers they came back with were good. About $50 a month better than I was hoping for. My current price was almost $2000 less than the $17~something thousand at the dealers in Morgantown. With multiple reassurances that I wasn’t making an awful mistake I took the deal.

So far it is a solid car. I averaged about 30 miles to the gallon this weekend. The low-gas light seems to pop on when you have 2 gallons left, so 40 to 60 miles of remaining fuel is a good indicator. I drove this tank of gas pretty hard, accelerating hard up hills and off the line on stop lights and could have gotten about 380 to 390 miles out of the tank. I’m guessing that on a road trip of solid highway driving the car will get between 430 and 450 miles to a tank. On average I expect to see about 27mpg, so roughly 370 to 380 miles per tank, with the amount of city driving that I do. Thats significantly better than the 10 to 18mpg that I’m used to in my truck (180 to 280 miles per tank, usually averaging 200).

Now, I just have to figure out how I want to mount my iPod. I have a couple of ideas. The nicer of the ideas will involve making a custom metal bracket and taking the dash apart. Which option I take depends on how well I can hide the audio and power cables. I’m going to attempt to keep this car looking nice and not like my truck .