The Story of Three

So we have been looking for a new (to us) car for awhile now. Our truck has been showing it’s age more and more, and now I am never sure if it will start for me or not. It also is a gas hog! We spend (and this is all necessary–no special trips) ~$400 a month in gas. Yuck!

Well, as of next friday—-no more! My dad is the service manager at a dealership in Southern California, and he’s been on the lookout. He found us a 2004 Mercury Sable LS with only about 17k miles on it. It was in great condition, and because his boss was so generous (and he’s known me since I was a little girl), we are getting the car for a nickel over their cost!!!!!!!!!! We had to take out a loan for this, which we had not originally planned on doing, but, as our calculations found, we will actually be saving money by getting this car because of the gas mileage issue. We should end up having an extra $50+ at the end of the month on our current car budget even with the car payment. Isn’t it amazing how God works these things out? This whole car thing has just dropped into our laps overnight. We were originally not interested, but the more we found out about it, we found we just couldn’t say no.

Well, here are a couple picture of our new baby. We’re flying down to pick her up on Friday. Oh, and for those of you who are looking for flights for anything, check Southwest. We got one way tickets for both of us, and the total cost was $99. Amazing!

Click to enlarge

This is after the windows were tinted.

So, a little while ago I signed up to beta test this coffee, and I figure I should tell you all what I thought.

Pros:
-Lots of flavor! As most flavored coffees smell more like the flavor than taste like it, I was pleasantly surprised to find how flavorful this coffee was. I had put in some french vanilla creamer and found that I didn’t really need it’s flavor.

-Full bodied and light on the acidity. Maybe the base for this coffee is asian, since it matches those characteristics the best.

Cons:
-It came already ground. I understand the logic behind sending a sample like this so that everyone can enjoy it, but my hubby and I like to grind our coffee fresh every morning. (Aside: We like to grind it really course and add an extra scoop because it allows for very smooth, strong, and almost never bitter coffee.)

-The coffee liqueur flavor came through a little too strong. It had almost a sweet alcohol-ish aftertaste, and I don’t really want that from my coffee. I would have enjoyed a stronger vanilla caramel flavor.

All in all, it was a pretty good coffee. I think I could buy this brand again but not this particular blend.