I was so busy that I ended up working from home this morning until lunch time. I was up early and thought that I would get into the office in good time but I logged in from home first, always a mistake, and ended up not having enough time to make it in. It worked out well, though, as I had a very long conference call this morning that I was able to do in my pajamas.
Liesl is on a much more regular sleep schedule now after her latest trip to Houston. She goes to bed between eight thirty and nine thirty every night. We don’t even have to tell her. Right around nine she comes to us and says “Night night?” And then it is a rush to get her into bed as quickly as possible and she goes right to sleep without any fuss. What a good girl she is!
Then, she sleeps almost exactly nine and a half hours. So if she makes it to bed at nine she is up at six thirty. She then goes down for a nap around eleven and sleeps for about two hours! So much different than even just a few weeks ago.
While I was working from home the daily menu from La Cima arrived and it looked really awesome. I sent it over to Dominica (who was working from the other room) and she thought that it looked great too. So at eleven thirty we set out for the club. This is the very first time that we are able to all go to the club as a family for lunch. Dominica has never really even gotten to see the amazing lunch buffet before so this was all new for her.
After lunch Dominica dropped me at the office and she and Liesl went out to do some very much needed grocery shopping as well as to run to Walmart to see what could be done about returning this defective microwave that we have. That actually went about as well as it could have considering that we did not have the receipt or the box! Dominica probably spent close to an hour dealing with just that but she did, eventually, manage to get the microwave swapped and we now have a new microwave that, for the moment, actually works.
I have a new coworker who started today. He has the desk directly next to mine.
After work I came home and we went right out and did some test driving of some “cars”. We have decided that we just really need a second vehicle with the way that our lives are and we really need one that is a bit larger than the X3. The X3 is fine for puttering around town but for trips to Houston, Austin or, especially, New York it does not cut it at all. We are primarily looking at the Chevy Traverse / GMC Acadia and the Mazda CX-9.
We went first to the local Chevy dealer. They have nothing on the lot and really look like they have gone out of business already. They had nothing in stock except for one used Acadia. So at least we drove that just to figure out if it was spacious enough and drove such that we would like it. We actually really liked it, quite a bit more than we had been expecting. It was very comfortable and handled quite well.
Before we could leave the dealer, however, some insane salesman came out and assaulted us. Our main salesman had been fine, not the best by any stretch, but the market is bad and we had been feeling bad for him having nothing to sell and no one to sell to. He was polite and helpful if nothing else. He knew that we were just looking and that we had to sell or rent our house before we could even consider anything and that we were only considering new – which this vehicle was not, it was just a sample to drive. But this other salesman came out, claimed that he knew us, told us that we absolutely had been there before and that he had been our salesman and implied that we were lying that we had not been there before. We said that we had just moved to Texas and he asked when. We told him December and he jumped all over us “Yes, December, that’s when you were here.” Of course, we were in Bayou Vista in December celebrating Christmas so I doubt that I “sleep walked” all the way from Galveston to Irving, test drove a vehicle I had never heard of at this creepy little Chevy dealer and drove all the way back without anyone ever knowing, including myself. The guy was actually scary. He then started seriously pressuring us to take this car that we weren’t even test driving with the intent of considering. He was rude, scary and insulting. This is what you get when you go to a Chevy dealer I guess. We’ve gotten so used to buying BMW and Mazda that I forget that when you shop for American cars people just assume things about you.
So we were pretty happy to get out of there and go to Freeman Mazda where we had wonderful, polite, helpful salespeople who helped us do a very good testdrive of the Mazda CX-9. The Mazda drove very well but, unfortunately, we don’t feel that the cabin area is sized well for us and the legroom just isn’t there (side to side) and we felt that the space was very confining. So, while we feel really badly not being able to buy a Mazda from the really nice people at Freeman the CX-9 just does not appear to be going to fit our needs. We are doubly unhappy as we are loyal Mazda owners (we own two currently and have owned two others as well) but the CX-9 just does not seem like it is going to be the car for us. We will likely give it one more test drive just to be sure but our first impression is that the Acadia will work much better for us. The Mazda was definitely more luxurious and sporty with amazing handling and power but utilitarian needs are our top priority at the moment and we were both very happy with the Acadia – much moreso than we had anticipated.
After our test drive we hit Taco Bell and returned home. Liesl was exhausted and went straight to bed. We played a little Dragon Age: Origins and called it a night ourselves.