I finally have a hot car.

That's hot as in bitchin', not as in stolen. I had typed up an informative essay of sorts on my car-buying experience and how well it went because I walked in to the dealership with a folder full of research gleaned from informative, consumer-friendly Web sites like edmunds.com (which I recommend as a must for anyone interested in buying or selling a car).

But then blogger died on me, so I've lost my will to type anymore. I'll just let the picture speak for itself. And then, in a few weeks when I notice my blog hasn't been updated in a long time, I'll have a ready-made topic to write about.

Drake graduation

I returned to my alma mater this weekend to watch the annual commencement ceremony as it droned on for more than two hours (even though it was only supposed to last two hours) just so we could cheer when my sister's name was called. Basically, a lot of waiting for very little gratification.

Midway through the incessant speeches by trustees, college presidents, deans and semi-famous actresses, I turned to my aunt and whispered, "I don't think mine was this boring." To which she replied, "Well I've got news for you honey. It was." In fact, she said mine was even more boring because we didn't have Cloris Leachman as a speaker.

For all my faithful blog readers who aren't familiar with Ms. Leachman, she played Phyllis on the Mary Tyler Moore show. She's also played various other roles since then, including a part as a crazy old lady in Spanglish. And, as you probably know, I am a huge fan of the Mary Tyler Moore show, so I was pretty excited about Leachman's presence at the ceremony to receive an honorary degree. That excitement quickly dissipated after she started talking. The woman was clearly either on drugs or in the late stages of senility. Nothing she said made any sense whatsoever, yet she still managed to keep talking for at least 20 minutes ... of sheer nothingness. It was quite an impressive feat. But it made for an entertaining spectacle, clearly elevating the excitement of the 2006 ceremony far above that of my own.

Wow, this blog post is kind of turning out like Cloris Leachman's speech. But hey, people like randomness, right? It's "stream of consciousness" blogging. And, I almost forgot the whole point of why I decided to post on this in the first place. One of my sister's friends has been living in the little mouse house all year. I asked her if there were still mice there, and she said yes – a lot of them. It seems like our little mice have grown up and started producing other little mice – and McClish still doesn't give a shit. Ahhh, Drake.

UPDATE: I felt the need to add the picture of Cloris Leachman because I felt like the blog post looked too "gray" without it and needed a piece of art. This is clearly a sign that I've been designing newspaper pages for too long.

This car is hot. That's all I can say. It's damn sexy. No, I haven't bought it because I'm very thorough and I'm still doing all my research, but it's a Mazda 3 - and I wasn't really that excited about owning a new car until I stumbled across this little gem - which is cheaper than both the Civic and the Corolla and is also much sexier. The main drawback - and the thing that's holding me back - is the gas mileage. It's decent - at 28 mpg in the city and 35 mpg on the highway. But that doesn't even compare with the Corolla, which gets 41 mpg in the city and 31 mpg in the city. The Civic is in between those two.

Gas mileage is the only thing I really care about - I hate buying gas, I hate oil companies, I hate gas stations, I hate everything about the whole oil/fuel industry. So I like to avoid it as much as humanly possible by buying a car that's not a gas pig. That really has been my only concern ... that and the cost. But then I drove the Mazda 3 and I started to feel weak. I mean, sure, it's more of a gas pig, but it's not tooooo bad, right? I don't know. I'll probably obsess about it for a few weeks or so before I decide which car to buy.