new car

So, we finally broke down and got Josh a new-to-us car. How did we know if was time to get a new car? Well, after I paid the rest of his car loan off when we got married ($5500) and then we had an engine repair ($2200) and its been slowly sucking oil the past year (not not not good) and then we weren't taking it outside of a 40 mile radius of our house (you know, because it was most likely going to have an issue) we decided to sell.

I mean, because this is the time to sell a 1998 SUV, with over 200k miles, that sucks oil and might die in a year, right?!

In the end, we were able to get a little bit of money for Josh's old car, use our tax returns and a little money from savings to purchase Josh's new car. He says the car is "our's", but since the thing is a 5-speed, sounds like a tank and takes up the whole road when driving I think he's just trying to be nice---after all, I did have several tantrums when I realized that I wasn't going to be able to frivolously spend some of the tax return on makeup, hair products or new jeans (because those items are necessities, or so I tried to convince Josh.)

So what kind of car did we get Josh? A Land Rover. Its actually a white 1999 Discovery. Our friend Evan at Reborn Co gave the car a whole new life! He transferred it from a V8 automatic to a 5-speed manual transmission diesel (with a new engine too!) He put a new axle on the car.....and did a bunch of other things that I can't remember right now. All I know is that since its a deisel now, it'll get a better gas mileage than my Jetta. Isn't that cool? An SUV with fabulous gas mileage! The best/strangest/messiest/green-est part about the car is that since its a diesel we can run it off part vegetable oil this summer. Isn't that strange? Evan is letting us borrow his oil-filtering system for the summer to see if we like driving a greisel. We'll get free used vegetable oil from some local restaurant/fast food places and have free fuel for our car!

**Please don't think I've gone all hippy on y'all. I'm not "green" or anything...I think Josh and I recycle about 0.4 times a year. This whole using-used-vegetable-oil-for-fuel thing is more about how cheap I am than about how Earth-friendly I am. So don't think I'm over here making hemp necklaces, dreadlocking my hair and wearing patchouli. I'm just a good old-fashioned cheapskate.