There's one more thing, I've got the pink slip, Daddy

It's not a Little Deuce Coupe.

But, at long last, after endless discussion, Janet and I bought a pickup truck.  It's a 2004 Ford F150 Extended Cab XLT 2WD 73K.  (Cars come with lots of strange letter and number combinations these days.)   It's black, which makes me very happy--I am hoping to get a Raiders bumper sticker on it some day.  But, when I brought up the idea, Lily chimed in with "Yeah, and we should put a Sarah Palin bumper sticker on it too," which I think may have ended my hopes of talking Janet into a bumper sticker.

The two primary reasons for this purchase are 1) Janet really needs a truck for her business--getting plants to the Farmer's Market just got a lot easier and 2) with Emma driving now, we wanted a third car to avoid the headache of car management.  But, honestly, I am pretty happy just to have a pickup truck--I have wanted a pickup truck since I started driving.

We leave to go camping this weekend, so the timing was pretty good.  We got it at a dealer auction--there is a guy in Granby who goes to dealer auctions and buys cars for you--you tell him what you want and how much you want to pay, and he finds the car and buys it for you--you pay the price from the auction plus $1000.  He is part of the family which owns the automotive repair shop in Granby we always use, so he knows quite a bit about cars, and gets anything which needs to be fixed done for you at a discount before you pick up the car. (Our truck needed new brakes and tires.)  So, this makes used car shopping a breeze--we set a maximum price and we are getting the truck with all the repairs and his commission for less than what we were willing to pay.  (And according the Kelly Blue Book, the same model car from a dealer would have cost us $4000-$5000 more.)  Anyway, before this starts sounding like a commercial, I'll just turn it into one--if you live in the area and are looking for a used car, I cannot recommend Merrill Auto highly enough.

We get the truck this afternoon.  Life is good.