"Lucky Girl" weekend

So much for my thought that I had found the way to find a car at the amount of money I want to spend in a way where I will not have to deal with my anger management issues with sales people...the latest from the person I thought was going to save me. Oh well. I am going to pick a day in May and just go to 3-4 dealerships and find something. I will try to take the Zen approach to car buying - I hope I can find some information on the internet about that! I am wondering how the MAZDA shipping accident falls into my usual "I am a lucky girl" thinking...

"I checked with a different manager and we are not at present using the smaller cars in our GTA department. This means we are not generating dealer demonstrator cars with cars like the Yaris or Scion. We use the Camry for sales staff who choose to go into our dealer demo program. These cars yield a demo that resales higher than your target price. Right now with fuel prices on the rise the Toyota product is selling itself and therefore the manufacturers and not having to put rebates on the cars to help them move off dealer lots. I do not know what Mazda is doing right now especially since they just lost 4,700 cars on the west coast in a shipping accident. I guess we are yet to see how that will influence the supply vs demand for since 70% of the cars lost were there best selling 3 series.
I am sorry that we do not at this point have a car that we can get into your price bracket. I will keep you in mind in case we get a great buy on one of the these cars."

But I have no complaints about the last 48 hours. Every time a plan changed, what filled in that time slot was positive. No trip to the Florence Griswold Museum on Friday night, but it was filled in by a brief appearance at a jewelry show that one of the teachers was having at school. I do hate those pyramid deals where half the time is spent on "inviting people to be a part of my team" talk by the "hostess". I know they work for lots of people but it is very uncomfortable for me. Then on to a wine and cheese (I have moved to beer and cheese as the spring has appeared - beer over white wine as a summer drink) at another teacher's new on campus house. The drama of on campus housing assignments is very interesting to watch and how disgruntled staff can turn into school cheerleaders as soon as the HOS gives them the house they want...people are something. But it was a good get together. Started slow, but I got into a discussion about Monsanto, Peace Corps, and Latin American travel so I was one of the last to leave. Luckily I only had one beer so after the get together I headed to the Historical Museum to help again with set up. Drama there too - "regulars" versus "new volunteers" issues. Very easy for me to stay out of that drama and a good thing for me to see before I commit to more volunteer involvement. Full day Friday came to an end after that.

As to Saturday, I was up early and headed down to the museum to see if they needed any pre sale arranging done, but it was all ready to go and the people who were there said they would probably need more help at the end of the day rather than during the sale. Sounded good to me so I headed home (it helps that the museum is only one block away from my apt so I can go back and forth with no real commitment). So I decided to clean my house and started reading the Stephen Torres book I got awhile back at one of the Hartford Public Library lectures. I got hooked, but I also needed to do my wash so I put the book down and headed to my parents. Another perfect timing incident - my mother's cousin was coming to visit from Rochester and we arrived almost at the same time. He is incredible, smart, makes my parents' day with his visits and we all stayed around for lunch. We had lots of "back in the day" talking about family events of the 50's and 60's and he shared with my parents that one of the plates they have sold on EBAY for $1000. My father was already intrigued by EBAY now he will be possessed. We looked at a picture my parents have in their dining room and could see where the plate was sitting at my mother's family home on Asylum Street in Hartford. My cousin also had a notebook of Hartford memorabilia that included an actual cancelled check that belonged to Beatrice Fox Auerbach - of the G. Fox family in Hartford - made out to the Honas Fish House (I think that was the name of the restaurant)...I was already intrigued by Auerbach since I went to a lecture that was moderated by a lady who just finished her biography and the fact that I had recently heard that the reason that the Hartford highway interchange of I91, Rt 44, I84 is so messed up because Ms. Auerbach used her political power to make sure that all roads led to G. Fox store...amazing. I had a great afternoon.

After lunch I had to decide whether to go to work for a couple of hours or go volunteer to help in the clean up at the museum. I am very happy that I chose to go to the museum. Since I am one of "the young volunteers"...I ran into a lot of my parents' friends and I got a lot of "I knew I knew you"; "I knew you were one of them" (like my family was a cult or indigenous people from back in the day). It was fun AND another perfect timing event in that I finished at 4:50 p.m. and I got to church for 5 p.m. mass so I did not have to figure out how to make church fit into today. After church I went for a walk and enjoyed hearing the drumming from the drum circle that takes place in town on Saturday. It is amazing how the sound travels - it was explained to me how drum signals took advantage of that phenomenon when deciding where they sat when they had messages to send to other villages.

After church and walk, I decided to do something I had never done before...watch a DVD on my laptop. I do not have any VCR or DVD player connected to my TV, but I wanted to watch Exposure by Patrice Hamilton so I did and I loved it!!! It was also neat because many of the actors are the people I saw at the Writers' Workshop at Tunxis in April. Very interesting sitting and watching a movie on my computer. I sat there, had a Mike's Hard Lemonade and watch the movie with only one interruption.

Sister #5 called on her way home from Brooklyn - her first trip to sister #3's house. She had a good time and I was glad to hear that. Her daughter, niece #4, wanted to see niece #2 before she heads to Arlington VA for the summer.

I finished up the night with reading a few pages of my book. Won't be reading today, it will be a work day. I have a mess on my desk and a mess at the head of our department and a meeting on Thursday that should be interesting...our new boss will be visiting for the day...another "I am intrigued" event coming up! So I want to get a jump start on the week so I can keep as close to my "zen" as possible. I am not holding out much hope...but I am going to give it my best college try. I also volunteered to be "an adult at the table" for the mandatory dinner in the dining hall event for boarding students tonight at 6 so I will work, walk, go to one of the spring music recitals at school at 5 and then dinner.

Only other goal for the day is to see Q&A, Justice Scalia, is Brian Lamb's guest.

But as you can see every time I came to a "fork in the what do I do next road" this weekend, I was happy with my choice. I am feeling the "I am a lucky girl" - except with the car deal, but maybe that is why "the stars" are giving me all this positive reinforcement so I will let myself "be guided" on that too...we will see.

Have a great week.