February 18, 2008 - Back to work on Monday. I'm not a big fan of Mondays because I have to go into the office and tell everyone how my weekend was and ask about theirs. I am just not a sharer. I don't like having to tell the same story more than once, and I don't like having to answer open ended questions. I like simple questions. Do you like chicken? Do you like this color shirt? Are you warm enough right now? Did you see that new movie? Those questions are very simple. My mind goes in too many directions, and it makes it difficult for me to focus in to think about whether my weekend was particularly good, and then to find some interesting tidbit from the weekend and share it in a melodramatic manner that will interest my audience. So anyway, I drive Ellie to work, then drive myself to work. I did some work on my marketing campaign and then it was lunch time. I drove to the car dealer that has the Volvo Ellie and I were looking at and took it for a test drive. I was disappointed. I wanted to find something wrong with it, for multiple reasons. If I found a problem, I could call off the interest in that car and continue on to something else. I could also use problems as a negotiating tool to reduce the asking price. Unfortunately, it drove great, so I had to come up with some wimpy reasons to negotiate a better price. I bought the Volvo for $1800, $100 off the asking price, plus I got him to waive the 2.5% fee for using a credit card (they pass along their service charge from the CC company typically). On the surface it doesn't look like much of a savings, but it adds up to over 7.5% off. That's better than I did with the house that I bought. I wasn't able to bring it home yet today, because they want to detail it. I presume that means they want to take it to the shop and loosen some bolts here, adjust something there, so that I'll have to come back in 30 days for a repair. I went back to work, and then at the end of the day picked Ellie up. We picked up some food at Surf and Turf Market, and then went home to make dinner for my parents and Ellie's mom. After dinner my dad was tired so my parents went home, and Ellie's mom stayed around to play Rummikub with us. I won the first round, Ellie won the second. We're a good team when it comes to games. Jake and Bailey had fun playing with Frankie while Ellie's mom was over.