The lease on my old car was going to run out the first week of August, and Bob thought I should take care of it sooner rather than later, just in case I couldn't get a deal I liked at the dealership where I bought it, i.e., in case I needed to do some shopping somewhere else. Not that we couldn't have worked it out, and not that I'm that picky, but it did seem like a good idea not to wait until the last minute, so I took yesterday afternoon off and went looking.

It took an hour.

I'd called the salesman a couple of days ago and told him what I was looking for--basically exactly what I already had--so he had had some time to look through their inventory and find one for me and work out the numbers.

In the meantime, I had almost talked myself into getting a different color. Not a color, really, but maybe graphite, or maybe silver. I love my black car, but it is hard to keep clean, but when it is clean, it looks great. So I was thinking maybe silver, which would also be cooler after sitting out in the hot parking lot all day . . .

I thought it was fairly unlikely that I'd actually come home with a new car the first day I went out looking, but just in case, I cleaned out the car, took everything out of the trunk and glove compartment, and even remembered to take the CDs out of the changer.

I went in to work in the morning, and left around noon. I raced out to the library to return a stack of library books and pick up a new audio tape set (the actual point of the mission), had a quick lunch at Schlotzky's, then drove out to Lawrence for the annual sidewalk sale.

Since it was about 100 degrees out, and also, since I had cleaned out the car, I didn't have any change to put in the parking meter, I just did a quick tour through the yarn store, bought a couple of grab bags of yarn, a pair of wooden needles (I'm slowing accumulating a whole set) and a magazine, then drove to the dealership.

I got there around 3:45. The salesman--one I hadn't dealt with before, since the guy I've always leased my cars from was no longer there--had a black one already picked out for me. It was exactly like the old one, exactly. Which had been exactly what I wanted, until I started thinking about a different color. I said, well, what else do you have? and we drove out to the lot and drove up and down the rows, looking for ZX2's with moon roofs--one of my main requirements.

There were a few, and we got out and looked at them, but none of them had everything I wanted--power locks and windows, remote access, CD changer, moon roof, um, I guess that's it. Oh, automatic transmission, which isn't "standard." We got back to the office and the salesman asked someone in the office to run my requirements through the database and see if there was another one in inventory, but aside from one silver one that had everything except the CD changer, the black one was it. And while we were talking, another salesman came in and asked if I was going to buy it, because he had someone else interested in it.

He ran the numbers, and with the rebates and incentives I could get it for exactly what my previous payment was, and that seemed like an excellent deal, so I took it.

I filled out the credit application, he walked it through, and at 4:45 he was shaking my hand in the parking lot and telling me if I needed anything else, to be sure to call. A record, I think.