More about the Sighing

So if you haven´t yet, read the next post down (which I only just posted) to find out what´s up with all the sighing.

Okay.

So I´ve spoken to every mechanic I know (starting with the one who came to "fix" the car I disabled myself, since it was when I called to arrange for someone else to pick up the girls that day that I discovered the red car wouldn´t be available to me for much longer), and I talked to the guys who changed my oil once, and the owner of the gym, and the aerobics instructor, and some guy who does auto upholstry down the street from the gym, and I´ve gotten all kinds of suggestions for places to look for cars.

I told everybody that I had two criteria:

• I want a small car, since the parking at the apartment is very tight - the Elantra snuggles right up to the neighbor´s doorstep - and
• I want a fuel-efficient car, since I´ll be driving about 45 minutes each way to work, and I´d hate to
  
  A) Cancel out the world-saving aspect of working to promote solar energy while burning up all that gas to get there, and
  B) Pay all that money, cause gas is even more expensive in Costa Rica than in the States.

I gave myself a strict talking-to about not falling in love with the first car I saw, but I´m afraid I don´t respond well to being told what to do, and I went ahead and loved the first one.

It´s a 1995 Geo Metro LSi, which CNN just did a whole article about how fuel-efficient they are. It´s in great shape cosmetically, despite the family having three small children and driving it to their farm on a regular basis. The engine is sparkly clean, and they just changed the oil and filters and, last year, the timing belt and the water pump.

It´s got AC and an alarm, along with luxury rims and a fancy radio that the guy said he could replace with standard rims & a plain old radio (fine with me) in order to bring the price down to what I figured I would have to spend in order to get a car I could feel good about. (You would be horrified if I told you how much that is, since cars are more expensive in Costa Rica than in the US. But $4000 is reasonable for this car in this economy.)

And it´s my absolute favorite color (the dark purple of my blog header), which I am choosing to see as a very good sign, just because I want to see it that way and you can´t stop me.

I need to organize the money end of it, and of course have a mechanic look it over. But hopefully by, say, the end of next week, I´ll have a new car to go with my new job, to go with my new apartment.

And then I´ll stop sighing and get on with it.