Easy Come... Easy Go

A couple of days ago, I discovered a $75 Best Buy gift card in a purse I hadn't used in a while. Woo hoo! I had just decided the night before to buy a  gadget to wirelessly connect my computer to my TV. We have 3 HDMI inputs on our 6 year-old TV but none of my laptops will connect to it. Yes, I've tried them on other TVs and they connect perfectly when I select the correct input. Yes, I've tried the HDMI cable on other TVs with both laptops and it works fine. It's just the big LG TV in our family room it won't work with. I'm hoping the new gadget will solve the problem.

Last week Skip took his car in for an oil change in preparation for our drive down to Florida this week. The mechanic noticed a leak and thought it was the radiator. He encouraged Skip to take the car into the Subaru dealer to have it checked out. Yesterday morning, he took the car in and fairly quickly after dropping off the car we got a call that it wasn't the radiator but the head gasket. We were shocked.

For those of you who don't recall our adventure last year at this time, our car engine blew up on I-75 in southern Georgia on our way to Florida. Long story short, we had to rent a car for 12 days while a replacement engine was being sought for the car. After throwing several thousand dollars at the problem (trading in the car in the US and importing it back to Canada wasn't a viable option), we enjoyed the rest of our holiday and with fingers crossed, got home in one piece. But I digress.

Facing another costly, extensive car repair, we decided to cut our losses, get rid of the accursed Subaru and buy a new car. Quickly. Fortunately I had already been thinking on those lines so knew a couple of models I wanted to test-drive. We ended up deciding to get a Hyundai Santa Fe 2.4L Premium FWD. It will look like this:

I pick it up tomorrow afternoon. We leave on our holiday on Thursday morning. Vroom, vroom! Once I make up my mind, it's "Skitter, scatter, let's get at 'er".

Honestly, we've been through shock, denial, anger, bargaining and now acceptance. It HAS been very stressful having to make a major financial decision and purchase in such a hurry. I didn't knit a single stitch on Monday! I was exhausted last night emotionally but couldn't sleep. It's not like I was worried about anything, I guess I was just geeked up.

This is the first car I've bought in 12.5 years so it's a pretty big deal.

I feel a lot better about our imminent 2400km (1500 mi) drive to Florida in the new car. We'll have to vary our driving speed for the first 1000km and not use cruise control at all for this 'break-in' period. We'll also get the oil changed once we get to Sarasota. Hopefully, we'll have an uneventful trip this year. I'll be reading the owner's manual to Skip in the car and learning about all the features as we go.

Thank goodness we found this about the old car now and not on our trip. As crappy as it was to have to buy a new car so quickly, it's great we'll have it for the trip.