Two new purchases in the Brandy household:

After a few days of internet-based shopping, we traded in my old 1998 Ford Taurus for pretty much the SAME car, just a later model. The poor "Tortoise" as we used to call it, was dying a slow death. It had a rust problem ("car cancer") that already caused one brake line to rust through, and another was on the brink. It had other issues too, like a failing oxygen sensor, windows that no longer operated, and I never knew if I had turn signals because the relay connection was so corroded that, even after adding a new part, my husband could not get the electrical on that to work consistently. There were a bunch of other funky aged-realted problems. We felt it just wasn't safe anymore.

So I found a good price on a later year, not-too-high-miles 2005 Sable, which is the same car, just slightly different exterior trim. The Taurus had nice metal rims and a power front seat 5-way adjustability. The sable has plastic hubcaps and a manul saet that either goes forward or back! I actually mught need to get one of htose pillows that strap on the seat because I get no back support.

 The funniest thing is - while the Taurus had am/fm CASSETTE...so does the Sable! Can you imagine being the person on the line in the Ford factory building a 2005 car with CASSETTE player!!!! No wonder Ford is in the sh*ts financially!

Anyway, the cassette thang is no big whoop, because I am more of a radio listener. I also have one of those casstte conversion tape-with-cord thingys so I can run my mp3 player through the cassette deck, and that works just fine enough for me.

I don't get very excited about cars. I wanted SAFE, easy to drive, good backseat room for kid, and decent gas milage (this one is 20cty/27 hwy) plus minimum 150 hp/V6 for highway driving and I got all that without the hassle of a car payment (low enough price w. trade in, so we paid out of savings.)

The only bummer is it stunk of cigarrette smoke when my hubby brought it home! (I chose it online, pulled the CARFAX report which was clean, and just sent him w. the paperwork to pick it up!) So I used nearly an entire bottle of Febreeze to freshen it up and left the doors open all day. It's getting better...

The "cage" part of this post refers to finally breaking down and getting a proper habitat enclosure for the frogs/tadpoles. I spent most of the morning setting it up. It looks nice and provides much more room for live plants, rocks, floating plants, and a "climbing wall" as well!