I ended up with a Civic. It's gorgeous and I absolutely love it. Man, I never thought I was into cars -- but this is my new toy and I haven't been able to take my eyes off of it. I think three things contributed to my love for this car.

The first was the that the literature on this car catered to what I wanted. The engineering is top notch, the safety ratings impeccable, and the fuel economy is one of the best. Oh, and the trunk is really large and the car is wide enough for me to put my cello hard case on the rear seats.

The second was that I got a trim level and color that suited me perfectly. The DX lacked many features that I wanted (like air conditioning and cruise control), while the EX had many things that I didn't need (the sunroof comes to mind). And then there was color. I had coveted a blue car since I was a little girl, and never had that wish fulfilled (former cars in my family were red, green, and silver). So now I have a beautiful blue one, and I am so much happier with it than if I had chosen silver or beige.

The last consideration was that I felt that I had gotten a good deal on this car. MSRP, including destination charge, on this baby was $18,355. Edmunds' TMV price for my area is $17,529 while the invoice price is reported to be $16,944. The dealership I went to sold it to me for $16,632. I could have gotten another $200 off if I had settled for silver, gray, or beige. I did seriously consider it, but in the end I felt that the $200 is worth a color that I L-O-V-E, especially since I plan to keep this car for the next two decades. Total price, including taxes and fees, came to just a few dollars over eighteen grand, and the dealer did not try to push any of the extras on me.

It is interesting how human psychology works. If one of these three factors did not exist, I don't think I would be as happy as I am now.

I also applied for the 2.9% financing, since I can put the cash into a savings account paying 5% (In my finance class, I think this is called a risk-free arbitrage opportunity). The financing should be no problem, but I have heard horror stories of people driving the car off the lot and having their app rejected two weeks later, after they've spent hundreds of dollars on insurance, maintenance, third-party supplies, etc.

First post of the year!

Let's get started. For starters, I'm not going goal-less this year like I tried in 2007. That worked out OK, but setting clear goals is quite an important task. I was using some pretty flawed logic in that goal-less post.

Short Term Goals:

• Join the Austin Rock Gym instead of a regular gym. Two years ago I went indoor rock climbing every other day for about 3 months and saw big changes in my all around strength. Rock climbing is more fun than a normal gym, uses more muscles and this gym is only 4 miles from where I live so I can bicycle there...which bring me to:
• Buy a bike. I found a good trick to buying a cheap bike that will last. Go to Wal-Mart, buy one of those $100 bikes, then go to a bike shop and get a $30 tune-up. I didn't believe it at first, but it literally changes the entire way the bike rides and feels. I used to have one, but I left it at my old apartment when I moved, and within two weeks it was gone.
• Locate 3-D Printers around Austin. I've been interested in the newly emerging technology 3-D Printing (aka rapid prototyping) for a long time, and want to start getting involved with it in some form. I've already found a $49,000 3D printer I can use on the cheap. <-- Just the thought of that gets me excited!
• Buy a big stopwatch. Shouldn't be that hard :-) I've been timing myself when doing work, and it makes things so much more interesting! Suppose I have a bunch of orders to sift through on a Monday for HouseOfRave and Bodymonkey, I'll keep a mark on time and see how fast I can knock them out of the way. It keeps me from goofing off during the task, makes me work faster because I'm "racing" against the clock and makes the work more interesting. If I set a goal of 20 minutes for myself and finish before that, it makes me feel like I've "won" something, sounds dorky, but it works! I tried doing this with an egg timer, only to find out that egg timers tick REALLY loudly. Plus they only measure elapsed time which doesn't get you racing quite as fast.

Medium Term Goals:

• Learn Joomla. Joomla is a dynamic content management system. In a nutshell, you can build dynamic web pages with it and there's lots of benefits to using it. I usually download software, install it then play with it to learn it, however this time I'm viewing every Flash tutorial I can find about Joomla and learning it BEFORE I install it. I've alreay started all of this.
• Learn AutoCAD. Once I have 3D printers to use, it means very little unless I can provide a .stl file for the printer to print. I want to learn the 3D drafting system AutoCAD (very commonly used in architecture & engineering) so I can create and manipulate 3D files. I've already got my hands on it and installed it on my desktop. In the future I'll most likely send my AutoCAD work to a drafter, as this program takes talent to use very well, however it's always good to know what you're talking about when sending a project to an artist.

Year Long Goals & Wants:

• I want to fly on a private jet. Cheapest rates I've seen are $1,100/hour for a 6-seater Learjet. Purpose of this goal? None really, I just think it's a neat, rare experience.
• Take a Zero-G Flight. For $3,675 you go on a Boeing 727 and do 14+ parabolic maneuvers which make you completely weightless for about a minute followed by 1.8g's of gravity against you as you go up. How.....freakin.....awesome! This is really expensive and doesn't include lodging or a flight to the take-off location, so it might have to wait till next year.
• Go to Japan. I've been to Japan before...and seen THE AIRPORT. I'd like to take at least a week this year and properly visit. EVERYONE I know whose been loves it for the high intensity energy of the cities, the food, the culture and the absurdly dedicated work ethic (I could use some o' that).
• Re-Learn Spanish. All those years of formal training in Spanish through middle school, high school and college didn't do it for me. It's said that learning how to use between 100 and 200 essential words in any language is enough to be partially fluent, and this is what those "Learn Spanish" CD's teach. I've already started doing these courses, and after only 10 lessons of the Pimsleur Spanish course I swear I could have decent conversations. However the Pimsleur course teaches formal Spanish which works well in Spain....but since I live in Texas, this doesn't fly. Therefore this goal is to re-take a different Spanish course that offers a more Hispanic translation, I've been recommended to use the Rocket Spanish course.
• Spread the word about Jelly. It's a great way for independent workers to work together.
• Practice speed-reading more. No need to explain the benefits of being able to read a page of a book in 60 seconds or much less. I used to be able to do this in high school when I'd read about 2 books a week...mainly just on the bus. Nowadays I practice this by going to the public library and reading every newspaper they have REALLY REALLY fast. At first you hardly pick up any information, but over time you start absorbing more and more by simply scanning through. Since about 50% of an article in any news story is generally fluff, being able to quickly spot and pick up vital information so quickly is pretty useful. This means I need to go to the library maybe twice a week and practice for 30 minutes at a time (the rest of the time I usually read all the new magazines).
• Go to more city council meetings. I've randomly gone and sat in on city council meetings before, and sometimes they're boring, sometimes they're interesting. However you always learn about new city decisions much before they're announced. It can't hurt to attend more of these, you never know who you'll meet or what information you'll hear.
• Increase eCommerce income by 100%. This means HouseOfRave.com and BodyMonkey.com should both double their income from the corresponding month last year. This will be accomplished through recently changes in both systems and email marketing, both of which have already started.

That's all the publicly available goals I've got for now, I may add more later. Have a happy & prosperous 2008!