We brought home the new car last night. It's an '01 Toyota Camry in a very pretty blue color that I haven't seen before and I looked at a lot of Camrys. We ended up [long story omitted] going through the Hertz lot at the airport and I can highly recommend this experience.

I've been dicking around looking at cars for over a month now [ads, car lots, friends of friends, etc.] and Thursday morning I called Hertz and Diana said she had a bunch of great Camrys so I drove over that minute, saw the blue one and knew that was the one. The trip to the Credit Union to wrap up the loan was much less painful than I expected. I carried that check around in my purse all day -- went to the spa, got a facial and massage, went to Trader Joe's and picked up food and cheap wine. We ate some dinner and then drove over and got the car. I didn't freak out once.

We have to sell the CRX and I have to admit, I feel bad driving the new car in front of it. I've been driving that car since May 90 when it had 7,000 miles on it. (It has 120K now). It's been very good to me and it seems cruel to park it so that it can see me zoom off in the Camry. (Half of you are groaning right now and half of you know exactly what I'm talking about.) I did a preliminary research project to see what it was worth and was a bit flabbergasted to see people asking $3000 for those cars. Mine is mechanically sound but looks a bit lived in so I wouldn't dream of asking that much. We need to sit down and figure out how we're going to handle it. I did give it a bath today and it's been vacuumed inside and looks pretty spiffy.