Car Shopping Fun

Meghan's Aunt Julie and I had a blast looking for cars for her. After spending one weekend looking at all of the options for the type of car she wanted (Small SUV / Wagon / Crossover) she ended up liking the Ford Taurus X. With 3 kids and 4 dogs, Julie needed some room.



And I have to say the car is quite impressive! You can fold down 3 rows of seats (including the front passenger seat) and put a 10 foot ladder or kayak in the car and close the trunk!



So long story short, we then started looking for the RIGHT 2008 Taurus X since there aren't too many used ones out there. There was one in Indy, one in Columbus, but after broadening our search to 200 miles, we found a dealership that had 38 of them! ROAD TRIP! The group of dealers was about 3 hours west of Indy.



I told Julie if we couldn't find a good one here we might not find one (since they had so many of them). After mapping out where all of the Taurus X's were at each dealer, we headed out. I wore an American Flag T-shirt to blend in as we headed out into the heart of America. We passed several pro-gun signs including my favorite:

"Gun sports are safe and fun, there's no need to fear a gun" (I am from a blue state, so this stuff is a riot to me).

The car "salesman" couldn't have been more laid back, basically Toby from the Office was our car salesman, unlike the others we had worked with he was so laid back. We arrived shortly after breakfast in case we were going to visit all 6 dealers, and we had some time to look at the cars ourselves. We drove a few contenders. This car has a lot of pick-up and I accidentally peeled out trying to put the car through the paces, with 263hp the car moves impressively well for its size. After a few test drives and some calls to the other dealers, Julie found the car she wanted and I think she got a good deal. We saved $2,500 from the Indy guys, and Julie got a dozen roses and a gas card.



We even had out picture taken with their mascot horse, Top Kick!



All in all it was a fun trip, a complete 180 from the experiences we had at other dealers and Julie found what she was looking for in a car at a good price. Like Julie said, "It was nice to go to a dealer and not feel like you got beat up!"

I'd highly recommend looking into the Bob Ridings chains of car lots, probably your best bet is if you are in the market for a used car.

New Home Accessory

I present to you - the Chia-Gutter:

Signs of a Recession

To be clear, we aren't technically in a recession (2 quarters in a row with negative GDP) but you can't mistake the pessimism in the market. Here is an example, a title from a Yahoo! Finance article:

Citigroup posts $2.5B loss, but beats expectations

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080718/earns_citigroup.html

Dance Crew: JabbaWockeeZ Performances

Here are some of the performances I was looking for last time from the Winners of ABDC Season #1. At lunch I heard the 1st song and thought to myself, "Why do I recognize this Timbaland Song?"

• MTV
• Music Videos
• MTV Shows
• Entertainment News

You down with ABDC?

OK - so Americas Best Dance Crew (ABDC) is awesome, or as Randy Jackson would say - it's hot! I am enjoying it more than American Idol.

What I like about the show is that it has a lot of creative and talented dancers with some amazing acrobatic ability breaking it down on the stage. It also has a hodge-podge of judges that I am not always sure I understand what they are saying because they use hip-hop dance slang which is awesome. It also has Mario Lopez and plenty of opportunity to make fun of how cheesy some of the stuff is (like audience members flashing "gang-sign" like gestures for their favorite "crew".

I think the combination of true art and talent with laughable cheesy stuff is what makes ABDC a must see on MTV at 10pm on Thursdays.

Indian Thriller

Somehow I ran into this on Youtube. It is supposed to be "Thriller" from India.



What is most amazing is how terrible and corny it is, in fact they will bust into some move that looks aweful but then I think "wait - that WAS a move from Michael Jackson's thriller! Only he made it look a lot less corny!"

Thriller is still a pretty good video to watch.