7. Magic

The real event of the day happened about 8:30; we went to the movies to see Harry Potter. I was just plain pooped. I suppose the "stress" of the situation is catching up with me; I'd lost some sleep last night over our apartment situation (yeah, I know I haven't divulged all this quite yet, but I'm still working on not jinxing it -- so you'd better still have your fingers crossed; sorry if they're getting stiff) and by the time I went back to sleep, got up only in time to see a guy about an Alfa. Yeah, a different guy. Sweet little machine, top of the line 87 Alfa Spider in beautiful shape. Really nice people too. Still had to think on it.

We hoped to resolve the apartment issue and maybe take in a festival in Menlo Park, but we couldn't connect with the apartment lady so decided to resolve the car issue by buying a Mini Cooper. It only took us, what? 72 hours to come to this conclusion! Great price, SUPER low mileage, nice little machine. Drives so tight, low noise, and my hair wasn't even blowing out of control. We love it. We were tempted to buy a new red one, but stuck with the used deal, in the name of recycling (and our bank account). So, we signed the papers.

Then at some point in the excruciatingly long time it took for them to close the deal (no kidding, we sat there over an hour after signing), I got a feeling, one of those itchy uncomfortable gut feelings. WSo I said, "I wonder what would happen if we just walked out," and I could tell Ross was having second thoughts about the car. We talked about leaving, talked about the Alfa, but when he had his chance for out, he didn't take it. We did mention that we were having second thoughts, and low and behold we were in the finance office immediately (go figure).

So back on track, we are about to be the proud second owners of a gorgeous little machine. We were reviewing numbers, facts, prices, etc., when there it was again, that magic feeling. I looked at Ross and he looked at me, and as I grabbed to remove the new mini key from where I'd just hooked it to my chain, he said, "We're not going to do this." After a 4+ hour jaunt to the east bay, we were running home empty-handed. And happy. And relieved.

We listened to our intuition. And it was clear to me we Ross and I were tuned into the same station! In the face of so many unknowns, it's good to know you can rely on the internal compass.