After a gruelling weekend of car shopping, I have a car. I am now the proud owner of a silver 2001 Acura Integra.

The shopping experience was interesting, and worthy of a longer entry, which I'm just plain too exhausted to write right now. The short version is, I test drove some cars, purchased and speed-read Car Buying for Dummies, decided that buying a used car was just going to get me more car for my money, did some hasty price research, and test drove and bought the aforementioned Integra.

I am thrilled with the car, and very happy with the price I paid. (I think a more savvy negotiator might have been able to shave a few hundred dollars more off the price, but I did pretty well.) My sales guy was definitely no sleazy used car salesman, but, wow, the whole negotiation was still pretty painful. Because you think that once you've negotiated a price on the car, you're done, but you're not -- there's antitheft systems, and special coatings to protect your paint and finish, and extra service and warranty coverage, and on and on, and you have to say no to everything about eight times if you don't want it, because they keep saying, "Well, but have you thought about this? Or have you thought about that? Or how about if we knock $200 off the price?" And you have to just keep saying, "No, really, I don't see a need for Hex-Guard anti-witchcraft protection; I'm on quite good terms with all the witches I know."

Okay, they didn't actually try to sell me anti-witchcraft protection, but it wouldn't have surprised me if they had. The sales guy did seem quite astonished by my response to his offer of some liquid-repellent coating to protect my interior from beverage spills: "I have a very simple way of protecting my interior from beverage spills. I don't drink or eat in my car. I don't allow other people to drink or eat in my car." He stopped trying to sell me the fancy coating after that.

So, as I said to Daniel in my phone call to him after the deal was finished. "I have a car and it's great and I'm so happy and I never ever ever ever want to do this again!"

I'm planning on keeping this car for a while. A long while.