New Car Story

I've been promising this entry for over a week, and no more too-early mornings have intervened.  So here it is: I finally got a car to replace my Odyssey.  

First Attempt

I mentioned in the previous entry that I'd located my minivan of choice, a 2006 Toyota Sienna, down in Zeeland.  I called, and they did in fact still have that car.  I arranged with them to take it for a test drive, and then arranged with the local Toyota dealership to have it checked over.  Just as well that I did... The dealership (and most mechanics) will charge you about $100 to look through the car's internals, but it's unfortunately worth the money.  The dealership, having no stake in whether I bought this car, informed me that several key pieces of maintenance hadn't been done, and there was a near-thousand dollar repair that needed fixing.  In addition, the back two tires were heavily used, one to the point of  being illegal to drive on (and one pothole away from sprouting a hole).  There were a number of smaller things wrong with it, too.  

In light of all of that, the dealership that owned it shrugged and said, "we'll fix the thousand-dollar issue and drop the price $1000, but that's all we can do for you."  So now the car had about another $1000 worth of repairs left needing fixing.  In addition, when I inspected the outside and inside, the inside was a bit torn up.  It was clean, because of course it was.  But the elbow-pads were torn off the armrests on the doors, leaving sharp edges behind.  And there were other signs of wear that suggested the previous owner really didn't care about their car.  I told the dealership I'd get back to them, took my copy of the estimate, and wrote out the details of the car: condition, price (now $8000), and contact info for the dealership.  I wasn't sure I was going to be able to find a better car.

Second Attempt

Annoyed with the whole ordeal, and worried that I wouldn't be able to find any other Siennas for sale, I called both Toyota dealerships in my city asking after the '06 Sienna.  The first one had a single car matching my description, the second didn't even have that.  So again, I made an appointment to check out the car.  Confused by the fact that this was already the Toyota dealership, I didn't initially make an appointment to get the car checked.  I went to check out the car and confused the salesman by not wanting to test drive it.  I was, perhaps, put off by the pricetag: $11,000.

It was also here that I got a taste of the more old fashioned used car salesmanship tactics.  The first car place either didn't care about my case or simply doesn't engage in such tactics, but this dealership pays its car salesmen on commission, and it's only a short leap of logic to understand that the salesmen are then only held back by their own morals from being cutthroat, lying, scheming, horrible people.  I doubt my particular salesman was trying very hard, but I still caught more than 3 pieces of bad psychology: "This is a high demand car, it might be gone in a couple days- but no pressure."  Yeah, sure.  Totally believe you with the no pressure thing.  Yep.  

I missed most of the bad psychology the first time around, but my memory was good enough that I was able to examine it in retrospect and get pretty annoyed.  Still, I had examined the car and gotten the dealership's report. All the regular maintenance seemed to be in order.  But the bad psychology had gotten me thinking, and made me distrustful.  I contacted my parents, who informed me that I should pick a local mechanic I thought well of and get it checked.  My parents are much wiser than me about such things, and it made sense anyway, so I did in fact make another appointment and this time took it out for a "drive" which went right to the local mechanic.  

Second and a Half Attempt

Unlike my last waiting room experience, this one was basically just quiet and somewhat awkward until I chatted with the staff a bit.  The place is Zandee's, and one of their employees goes to my church.  Eventually, they came back with a report: this car, too, wasn't perfect, but it was flawed in somewhat amusing ways.  The horn, of all things, was broken.  For some reason I found that vastly amusing.  All the working parts in a car, the vast intricacies that make a car move... and the horn was broken.  It was also missing the spare tire. Finally, there was some darkish residue around the valves by the motor, suggesting to the mechanics that someone may have missed an oil change or two.  

I took it back and had the Toyota dealership check the car's history.  There was a short period of about 15,000 miles where the car didn't have recorded oil changes.  That was it.  When I got back, the salesman in charge of my particular case was busy with a higher priority deal: an older couple, perhaps buying a new car.  My parents, given their choice of the two cars I'd seen, vastly preferred this car.  Which left me with the dubious experience of trying to out-psychology the people that do this for a living.  My father coached me.  Included were tips such as:

• Come with your checkbook, and make your offer.  Tell them, "I'll give you X for it, and here's my checkbook, I'm ready to make the down payment right now."
• If you're not making any headway with the salesperson, ask for the sales manager.  The sales manager isn't paid on commission and as such prefers cars sold and moved over extracting the very best price.
• Come prepared with a second offer, so you can say "well, I have another offer for X, but I like this car a little more, so I'll give you Y for it."  This tells them you're not their only option and that you're willing to walk away if they don't work with you.  
• Be actually prepared to walk away, and see if they chase you.  If they don't chase you, call again in a week or so and say "My offer is still there; you ready to talk business yet?"  
• Know how much the car is actually worth, using Kelly Blue Book. Keep in mind that this price is both the worth of the car (including all repairs) and a fair markup for the dealership, meaning they will make a profit.

Needless to say, there was a lot to keep in mind. But this did seem to be the best option.  As it happened, God smiled on me.  It was the 31st of March, the final day of the first quarter of the calendar year.  And one of the employees, perhaps feeling sorry for me, informed me while he was looking up the car history, that if they could sell one more used car by the end of today, everyone would get a bonus.  Valuable information. 

So with the salesperson still busy, I lingered at the desk until I could speak to the sales manager.  I offered him $7.7k for the car, and gave him the line that I was quite willing to make the down payment immediately.  He made grumpy noises about Kelly Blue Book, as did some of the other staff.  Apparently they use a different metric for determining the worth of a used car.  I didn't let that deter me, and waited patiently.  Finally, the manager gave in, surprisingly without even trying to haggle.  So in the end I got the car for just over $8k, with all fees, taxes, and etc. figured in. 

This is my new (to me) car: a 2006 Toyota Sienna.  It's 7 years and 117,000 miles newer than my old car.  Longer time readers will know I'm really not fond of red in the slightest (this is maroon, but it's red enough).  I am, however, pragmatic enough to care more about the internals of the car than the paint job, and other than the horn (heh) and the spare tire (easily acquirable at a junkyard), it's in near-perfect condition.  Also it has an MP3 player input, meaning at long last, I'll be able to plug my tablet into my car and play music.  I'm excited about that. 

Less happily: I now have to dispose of the Odyssey.  The dealership offered me $200, which is a pittance for a car that has a lot of usable outer parts and probably a number of good internal parts, too.  I've been dragging my feet, but there's a transmission place about a half hour away that I should call first.  They like Honda, and Odysseys in particular, and they've done me a good turn in the past.  The car is worth anywhere from $250-800, but there are multiple things wrong with it, so I'll see what they think it's worth.  There's also a junk yard near here I need to visit anyway, to get a spare tire.  They would also probably have an offer. 

I'm probably dragging my feet for sentimental reasons as well as the fact that it's effortful to use the phone and arrange for the "death" of my old car.  But the license plate and insurance have been transferred to the new car, so I'd best get on that soon. 

LENS and Life, week of 4/12/16

One site last week, probably one site this week too. 

I managed to not get entirely lost whilst my tablet was gone, and now thankfully it's fixed.  I think they may've been sweethearts and fixed the bent pin in the charging port, too.  But I'm not sure, and I paid them a lot for the repair, so I'm mainly just happy they did, in fact, fix it flawlessly. 

This weekend was a bit quieter, thankfully.  There was still the Sunday night D&D, but everything else was quiet.  Well, except for the cats.  I occasionally do cat care for some older, more travel-prone friends of mine, and their cats are characters.  The one is huge and fluffy and a complete fraidy-cat.  The other is absurdly thin and acrobatic.  Normally she's affectionate, but she seems to be giving me the cold shoulder right now.  In any case, I've been grabbing a book and heading over to their place for an hour or two, getting them fed, and annoying them with the toys and laser pointer.  They don't seem to mind.

I mentioned B vitamins in the last entry here.  In an effort to combat my sleep issues, my doctor has recommended I try a B complex.  This is the second time we've tried this.  The first time I went and got a thing from Meijer and tried having that with my breakfast.  The results were... completely horrifying.  Upon taking the pill in the morning, I would burp the acrid flavor of B vitamins for the next four hours.  Approximately every 3 minutes.  I tried varying my breakfast, as that can help keep bubbles from forming in the stomach.  Nothing worked.  I gave up in less than half a week, because I simply couldn't handle the disgusting. 

So now, about one year later, we're trying again.  This time the supplement is medical grade, meaning the FDA actually cares what's in it and it has to be a certain level of purity.  Apparently not all supplements are created equal, and some companies will advertise a certain amount of a substance in their product, but really have anywhere from 20-70% of that amount  and the rest is filler.  Distressing, but that's why you have to be careful about where you get your stuff. 

If I take these B vitamins on an empty stomach, I do still burp the taste (like once every half an hour).  But these are milder by a good bit than the other supplements.  If I take them with food, I don't even get that.  Which means something really bad was up with those Meijer supplements.  Disappointing.  In any case, I'm now having new and different sleep problems. 

B vitamins serve to wake you up, which is why I was told to take them in the morning, opposite the sleepytime stuff.  That's to minimize their chances of affecting your ability to get to sleep.  Naturally, that is apparently insufficient for me.  I'm now waking up every few days at 2-4am, and then being unable to sleep for at least an hour.  Last Friday's entry was the second such experience, and I've had another since that gave me a 9 hour-long headache after I woke up. 

I might consider taking the B vitamins every other day.  They are doing stuff, as evidenced by my shifting sleep patterns.  But I can't cut the dosage in half, because the pills are those capsule things.  (Well, I could open the capsules, pour out half the stuff, and take them, but that's a lot of work.)  I'll ask the doctor what I should do in the next couple days. 

Happy 4am / Reflection on Friendships and the Spectrum

I was going to write something cheerful today about my new (to me) car, because that panned out.  Unfortunately, life intervened.  It's 4:30am, and I've just given up on getting back to sleep.  I went to bed at 9:30pm or so with a head full of dark and angry thoughts.  I woke up at around 2am, when a noise roused me from the melatonin-daze.  I opted to use the bathroom while I was awake, then went back to bed... and promptly couldn't sleep for a half hour.  I got up, took my newly-fixed tablet (it has a blue light filter, so it's less disruptive to sleep) and went to the guest bedroom.  I have a backlog of comics, so I figured I'd read those 'til I got sleepy.  Except I didn't, all the way to 3:30am.  It occurred to me that I might've gone to bed hungry, so I ate a small, nutritious snack around 4.  Went back to bed and figured that would be that.

Nope.  So here I am, still with a head full of dark thoughts, and it's three hours 'til Chris will be awake.  About the same for any semblance of daylight.  And unfortunately I do have things to do today, so hopefully the fact that I got maybe five hours of sleep doesn't destroy my chances of managing things...

Actually, maybe one of those things will be okay.  I have a friend in England I'm rather fond of, and being a sweet person, he has requested we play video games together.  He's having a rather hard time with life right now, and I kinda am too, so perhaps we can complain to each other while we game.  The current things bothering me are perhaps something he could help with, since they're social in nature and he, like me, thinks deeply about things.  He may have some insight I don't.

Social things is rather nondescript.  I shouldn't point fingers or name names, as that's not terribly mature or really even conducive to problem solving, but the short is that I'm having trouble either being a friend or having friends, or both.  Being too close to the problem, it's hard for me to say whether it's something I'm doing wrong, or something wrong being done to me.

Autistic people, as a rule, have more difficulty with making and keeping friends than most.  So even though I should know better, I tend to automatically assume that if a friendship isn't working out, it's my fault.  Perhaps I'm not being sensitive to their needs, or not being open enough, or welcoming, or entertaining.  That is, I think, a somewhat fair concern for someone on the spectrum to have, since our skills have to be learned, rather than intuited.  There are bound to be holes in that education.  That's simply life.  We learn as we make mistakes, get help figuring out those mistakes, and grow as people, but those same mistakes can end relationships.

So then I have to wonder: is it my fault?  Or perhaps, "is it all my fault?" is more apt.  I tend to assume yes.  The alternative would be assuming it's all their fault (because the middle ground is harder to fathom) and these are people I like, after all.  It would be uncharitable to assume they're simply being bad friends.  Their lives, after all, are hardly paradise either.  The thing is, that admonition rings a little hollow when those friends make time for other friends, but not for you.  They don't call or email or send messages saying "hey let's do stuff."  You do that for them, and get "yeah sure" or "eh, maybe another time"  but there's no reciprocity.  That's a breakdown in the process.  It's the problem point- but not the problem.  Like my sleep problems, there are a lot of factors that go into a good friendship, and if some of them, or even just one, are sufficiently out of whack, the whole thing starts stumbling.

I'm tempted to be direct and straightforward, and simply ask what's going on.  But that's never worked out for me in situations like this.  If I decide to give up on the whole thing, perhaps I will ask, just to see what they say.  But in my experience, people simply aren't aware of that level of disharmony.  When put on the spot, they flounder and make excuses and try to be polite.  I don't need polite; I need honest.  I'm likely to get a bunch of hooey about how things are stressful right now, and everything's in transit, and embarrassment about their lack of sensitivity, and none of that helps me patch the relationship or decide it's not worth it.

I suppose this has all come into light for me since I recently had a nice time with a couple other friends.  People who actually act like friends.  They're more social than I am by a good margin, but they make time for me and Chris.  They actively consider how we might be feeling.  They're genuinely interested in us, and we in them.  That is, as I understand it, at least one definition of a good friendship.  Certainly all friendships are going to differ, since there are so many kinds of people in the world.  But it's not really a friendship if it's one-way, right?

I know the confident person response to a situation like this.  It's to say, "well, if I'm not worth their time, they're not worth my time" and walk your talk.  Stop being the one-way street.  Find other friends.  Fill the emptiness that comes with the passing of that friendship with new people.  I know that; but it's harder to believe that's the best course of action.  These are good people, with many good and admirable traits.  True to my base nature, I guess, I tend to assume good people that make good friends to others like me can make good friends to me.  That, clearly, is not the case.  In addition, it's really hard for me to make new friends.  I'm unusual.  I have interests that don't line up to most of my peers.  I'm quirky.  It takes some getting used to, and some effort to accept those oddities.  So far as I can tell, the people willing to put in that effort are few.  In this busy society, full of overworked, underpaid, under-empowered, and under-rested people, summoning up the patience to befriend someone like me is less and less likely to happen.

I also know the traditional wisdom response to that.  "Better few friends that are healthy for you than many that poison you."  And perhaps another relevant bit of wisdom: "Don't make big life decisions while sleep deprived."  Come daylight (it's 6am, still none of that to be found) I'll discuss this with my friend, and with Chris.  Both of them will have different things to offer, and that will hopefully help me make a good decision.  Not one made in the bitterness steeped over several years, on a morning that started far too early.

Sorry about the morose today.  Happier things next week, like pictures of the new (to me) car.  And the B vitamin supplement that isn't making me shriek in disgust every 3-5 minutes. 

LENS and Life, week of 4/5

? sites this week, because my appointment is tomorrow.  I feel like this section of the entry would be a lot more exciting if we weren't dealing with a lifelong issue.  I can mostly just say that I don't see any major changes, and it's vastly difficult to track incremental progress without thorough documentation.  Sadly, I am neither organized enough nor obsessive enough to accrue said paperwork.

I am sad.  My trusty tablet is still out of commission, and will be 'til this Saturday or perhaps even Monday.  Apparently the supplier sent the wrong part, so then my two-day repair became a two-week repair with needing to exchange parts.  I miss my library.  And my on-hand Internet.  And my music.  I've fallen way behind on my comics and the news sites I like to follow.  I have to run between kitchen and computer if I don't remember a recipe.  But perhaps most importantly, if I get lost while driving, I'm lost until I stop and ask for directions.  Or more likely, wander in a direction until I recognize something.  That hasn't happened yet, because I'm less than willing to drive somewhere new without my tablet.  But it might, if this keeps up.

Chris has been sweet and let me borrow his phone a couple days last week, which was good because I had to drive a half hour into new territory to check out the Sienna I mentioned last week.  It's possible I could have made it to the correct place without an auto-updating map, but getting back might have been a bit more challenging.  And of course I needed to take the car to a mechanic to get it checked, to say nothing of the hour and a half of sheer boredom in the waiting room.

Seriously, the place was blaring Fox "News," the hot water machine for tea was broken, and the food offered was donut holes.  I may have had several donut holes in an attempt to dull the frustration of listening to Fox "News'" fearmongering.  Thankfully, God smiled upon me, and the other customers left the waiting room.  I was extremely tempted to just turn the dratted TV off, but I figured that might not go over well.  So I turned it to CNN and snuck back to my seat.  CNN still annoyed me, but it didn't blast its news at top volume and it didn't make as many broad, sweeping, blatantly ignorant assumptions.

Which isn't to praise CNN.  I'm sure it made several of those assumptions.  They were just quieter and more subtle and didn't demand my attention, so I was able to ignore them entirely.  Can you tell I'm not a fan of TV news?  I think the only TV news I'd watch, if it was a thing, would be BBC.  And that, only if they would please condense the important US and world news into bullet points.  I can research from bullet points, and bullet points are less likely to be all biased and ugly by virtue of their brevity.

I'm still a bit worn out from this weekend.  There was checking out cars (more on that this Friday) and pestering my parents about cars.  Then on Saturday, which is normally my day to stay in and enjoy quiet time with Chris, we had company, which turned into us being dragged to a marathon D&D game.  I have a pair of friends across the state near Detroit, and they periodically come to visit friends here.  So a couple hours visiting at my apartment, then another...eh, 7 hours of hanging out playing D&D or watching soccer (football to the British and most of the rest of the world).  This friend group is louder than most, so I got worn out pretty fast.   But I didn't feel comfortable leaving quickly, because we were right in the middle of a game.  Go figure.

The next day was more D&D, with a different group.  But again, 7 hours.  Needless to say, I was not rested and refreshed for the coming week yesterday (Monday).  I actually spent most of yesterday with an anxious, buzzy brain.  Didn't really make for getting much done.  But Chris made corn chowder soup, with some help chopping potatoes and vegetables.  It turned out pretty well, and he made a double batch!  Freezing most of it except for two additional portions.  Lunch or dinner today will be tasty tasty soup.  Something to look forward to. 

Article: Phrases for Calming Anxiety

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/stress-better/2016/03/49-phrases-to-calm-an-anxious-child/#.Vt9ppb1gnHM.facebook

Articles like this are always interesting to me, because I've lived with untreated anxiety so long.  I guess I no longer qualify for that category since I started LENS and various supplements, but I still clocked over two decades prior to that.  I still experience plenty of anxiety, especially over major life events like, say, buying a car.  More on that next week. 

I like a number of the ideas in here.  Changing "let's take deep breathes" (#3) into "let's blow up a giant balloon" and making silly noises to complement that strikes me as something that, while childish sounding, might still work on adults.  It's something my fiance would do, if he had to work me through panic attacks.

I'm not sure how useful asking the "why" of something is (#5).  If a child or adult is having a panic attack, their likely answer is "I don't know augh everything is terrible and I'm gonna dieeeee!"  I guess for less episodal anxiety, like mine, asking the why of the anxiety isn't quite as pointless.  My particular brand of anxiety doesn't really have a specific cause... it's right in the name.  Generalized Anxiety Disorder.  In plainspeak: everything makes me anxious. 

Asking "what happens next after this thing that makes you anxious" is probably pretty good advice overall.  I personally just try to keep in mind the phrase "this too shall pass." 

I think #9, drawing a picture of the monster-feeling, kinda got permanently disrupted by seeing some well-made artistic renditions of different mental illnesses.  You can find the ones I mean here.

A few of the other options are visualization options, or having the child talk through their thoughts.  Those can be very helpful options for parents (and perhaps for kids, too), since it can be very hard to get inside an autistic child's head. 

Many of the other options are emotional support.  I... guess I don't necessarily identify strongly with the need for those, but most children didn't try to be Spock (without knowing they were trying to be Spock, or otherwise) when they grew up.  So I'm going to guess that those affirmations "I love you; you are safe," "you are not alone," "I am proud of you already," "I know this is hard," etc, are pretty helpful. 

LENS and Life, week of 3/29/16

One site last week.  No sites this week at all, because scheduling is full of special. 

I'm really really not sleeping well, which is bad news because today I need to drive down to Zeeland and check out the used Toyota Sienna I mentioned last Friday.  I'm feeling very awkward about showing up and going "yeah, uh, so I'm taking this thing to the dealership, 'kay?"  By the sound of the place, they won't mind, but it still strikes me as a blatant "I don't trust you guys" measure.  Which I don't, but it's rude to say something like that even if it's true.  The difference between truth, tact, and lies is sometimes kind of frustrating and anxiety-provoking.

I also have to apparently buy the car before I can get the car loan, which is just...great...  Oh, and get insurance for it.  It's a shame I really need the line of credit on my credit rating, because the amount of hoops I'm having to jump through just to pay them /more money in the end/ is completely exasperating.

Also today, apparently someone at the micro-enterprise place tried chainmail and couldn't quite make it work, so the organizer has gotten stuck with a bunch of supplies.  She's handing them off to me.  I'm grateful she's thinking of me, but I'm hoping against hope that the supplies are of the same manufacturer as my existing stock.  If they're not, I'm not sure what I'll do with them.  You would think that colored rings of metal are colored rings of metal, but they can vary by metal type, coloring method, and finishing process... suffice it to say that the rings offered in the craft stores are really not on the same level as the rings I order from my preferred source, The Ring Lord.  So we'll see, I guess.  That's right after I finish with the car business. 

Then I still don't get to lie down and curl into a stressed tired ball, because this evening there's the first "official" adult autistic people meeting.   I think it's just going to be hang out time, so nothing hugely stressful, but I already feel exhausted and I haven't even been up an hour, so y'know, not really a good sign.  I'm bringing pop to the meeting, which is to say I'm bringing sugarless pop to the meeting.  My fridge has never had so much pop in it, in so many flavors.  I have Sprite-knockoff, cream soda, and ginger ale.  There should only be like 5 people, so hopefully they won't be too put out if I don't have a cola knockoff.  I never really got enamored of Coke or Pepsi. 

Car Shopping

Intro 

As I mentioned in last Friday's entry, I am in need of a new car.  And by "new" I mean "new to me" because I somehow don't see myself ponying up $40,000 anytime soon.  I'm going to walk us through the process I'm using to determine what kind of car to shop for, and how I'm going about it.  I'm actually not sure if my process differs from most peoples', but it may be handy to have this somewhere.  I've already determined my old car is not worth repairing, because the cost to repair it is about how much the entire car is worth.

Figuring Out The Basics

The very first thing I consider is what kind of car I'm looking for.  Not brand, but simply car type: SUV, pickup truck, minivan, or standard car.  I'm accustomed to having a minivan, and I enjoy minivans a lot.  That doesn't mean it's the best possible option for me, because minivans are also fuel-inefficient and less reliable than a smaller form factor.  Not sure why, but the ratings- I'll get to those in a bit- bear this out.  

Focusing purely on fuel-efficiency and my environmental concerns, I should try saving up for a Tesla or similar electric or hybrid small car.  Unfortunately I do not have the money for that, and I'm not sure I could or should get a loan of that magnitude.  My fiancee and I already in debt, and while we would both enjoy having a Tesla, it's just not going to happen anytime soon.  

We are, however, planning to move from this apartment to a house sometime in the next couple years.  As such, it would behoove me to have carrying capacity.  In addition, my parents will be coming to live in this state in a couple years, and Mom likes to ride bikes together.  She has her own SUV that will carry them, but it'd be nice to be able to offer to do so.  In addition, I have at least one pair of friends that will likely be moving sometime in the next couple years, based on their general unhappiness with their current residence.  

Between my familiarity with a minivan and the reasons above, I'm intending to shop for a used minivan.

Next: Brands and Ratings

My father taught me about an organization called Consumer Reports from when I was quite young, and he continued referencing their magazine throughout my life.  For those who don't recognize the name, Consumer Reports is basically a group of uncorrupted consumers that get together to test commonly used household items.  Luggage, microwaves, toilet paper, and cell phones are all examples of things they test.  They take no money from companies at all, so they can do their tests fairly and without accusations of bias.  And they test cars.  All kinds of cars, all kinds of brands, and all kinds of tests.

I have a subscription to their online site, which contains most of what the magazines do.  My father, however, has both.  In addition, the group puts out a car buying guide every year, which he received.  So it was now time to ask my dad what minivans looked good.  

I was rather heavily biased towards Honda, because they made my old Odyssey and the poor thing has clocked nearly 240,000 miles.  As things go, that's pretty good.  But my dad informed me that the Odyssey has slipped a bit in reliability.  Apparently my best bet under $10,000 is a 2006 Toyota Sienna.  This is based on its overall reliability over the years it's been out (10 now, geez), any common problems that cropped up for the model, and how well-built it was in the first place. 

People who've lived in Michigan for awhile will note that both Honda and Toyota are both foreign brands, and perhaps shake angry sticks (pitchforks, torches, jars of tar with feathers) at me.  Michigan, as you probably know, is home to the Big Three American car manufacturers.  Well, my very first car was a Ford.  And it broke down a lot.  My engineer sister-in-law informed me that the acronym for Ford is "Found On Roadside Dead."  I don't have the money to spend on car repairs every 3 months or so.  So it's the most reliable car for me, and if that's a foreign car, that's how it is.

Shopping...

So now it's on to the actual shopping, since I know what I want.  We are now prognosticating into the future, because I haven't had time to do all the things I'll need to here.

The first step will be scouting out cars online, and pestering the Toyota dealership.  While Consumer Reports say I should be able to find one for under $10,000, that may not necessarily be the case.  Depending on what cars are available, and in what condition and mileage, I may have to pay a bit more or less.  Kelly Blue Book is one online resource I'll use.  I'll also check Auto Trader and a few other websites, as they serve to collect information from car dealers in the surrounding area and put it all in one location.  

Trawling those two online resources has located me a silver van for $9k in Zeeland, which is a short hike from here.  I'd prefer blue, but beggers can't be choosers.  The car is registered with the CarFax service, which is basically a tracker for the accidents, mileage, service visits, etc.  The dealer that presently holds the car is listed.  My next step will be to call them and see if that car is still available.  Simply because it's listed online does not mean it's still for sale.  

Assuming they have the car, I will then need to talk to my bank about a loan.  Ideally, since I don't have a lot of credit, they'll loan me about half what I need for the car.  I can afford to put down half the car's cost, but that's about it.  And I need the credit.  

Assuming I can get the loan, I will then need to drive down to check out the car myself, and perhaps see if I can get it inspected by a local dealership.  It looks like there's a Toyota dealership about five minutes away from the place that has the Sienna I'm interested in.  If there are no red flags, I'll buy the car and trade in my old car. 

And that should be that!