At last I can tell what I was so excited about earlier this week. Emma and I bought a new car! It’s a 2007 white Toyota Matrix. Technically it’s not a new car — it has about 14k miles — but it has been a long-term demo car; we’re her first owners. Whee!

So for several years now I’ve been saying to Emma that she should see the Matrix, that I thought it was a car she’d really like. She loves hatchbacks and cars with four doors, and here’s a four-door hatchback! Plus it’s a Toyota, so it’s built well, will get decent gas mileage, and should be pretty reliable. Years, I tell you.

Tuesday afternoon, Emma picked me up from work. We’re driving to find an early dinner when she says to me, “The Toyota Matrix is a really cute car. Have you seen it?” Years, I tell you. I’m glad to know how well she listens. (Love you, honey)

So she takes me to dinner at Hops, a chain restaurant but one that brews its own beer. Two glasses of Powder Horn Pilsner later (in me, not in her) we’re driving to the dealership to “look” at a Matrix. We didn’t have any intention of actually buying a car. But then we saw the car, took it for a test drive, and Emma fell in love. Half an hour later we’re talking with a closer about price. Half an hour after that, we’re talking with the financing guy, and before we know it, we’re driving it home (well, after making a down payment, of course).

The whole thing is still pretty unreal. I can’t believe they just let us take the car after signing a few papers. And they’ve let us keep it. Nobody’s shown up saying, “Sorry, we made a big mistake.” Yeah, Emma’s a doctor, but it’s not like she’s getting paid a huge amount of money. And we’ve got some pretty serious debt between our credit cards and her med school loans. I think we got a pretty decent deal. It’s basically a new car and we got it for a few thousand dollars less than an actual new car. It’s an automatic — which is slightly suboptimal — but it’s ours. Power steering, power locks, power windows (so we need to buy a car hammer and stick it in the glove box).

The car is Emma’s, naturally. She’s going to be paying for it with her moonlighting, so it seems only fair. We kept the Saturn as a beater car, for me to drive around town as needed.

Pictures to come tomorrow!