We won a brand new car!

Well, not won, but paid for. We just leased an '09 Toyota Corolla. This is Samantha's baby, as she will be using it for work while I still drive around the good ol' Pepto Bismol Mobile. I took one of my sales reps out for a business lunch in that teenage toy car. I am certainly embarrassed to admit that he has to open the door for me on the inside driver's side, as my exterior door handle on the driver's side is still broken. Can you sense my jealousy? I buy the car for my wife and I'm still stuck with the '95 hatchback. At least I get to drive it on the weekend. Plus, I don't have to wake up and drive her to school at 7am every morning.

The Corolla is really nice. It's a really huge upgrade since both of us are used to driving around cars from the late 20th century. Even automatic locks are a pleasant change.

The buying process was harrowing, filled with aggressive sales tactics and unrelenting salesmen. After a week of pitting four dealerships against each other for my business, I was able to drop $1,500 from the down payment and got a nice monthly payment (under $200). My wife, God bless Her for being so talented in other things, is not a negotiator. The only responsibility I gave her was to pick the color. She picked a really nice Black Sand Pearl, which is not a flat black at all. It has a pearlescent and sparkling (non-gay) finish that adds another dimension to the color. I am pleased. Blue, of course, would have been my pick, but black is certainly a bad-ass color that I do not mind driving people around in.

Happy New Year, 2009!

Happy New Year from Samantha, Tom and Dante!

Merry Christmas, everybody!

What better to signal another Christmas gone by than with a mild 60 degree Sunday in New Jersey. Yuck. Where's the frosty air?

Anyway, Christmas was fun. We got to see most of our immediate family and friends in the last week and exchanged many presents. One present that Tom has been getting a lot of use out of is NBA Live 09 that John gave me. He's been playing it way too much the last few days. Friday, Saturday and Sunday have been all about relaxing for a large portion of the day. We also have a lot of nifty gift cards that are now burning a hole in the wallet, so to speak.

Can't wait till New Year's when we entertain the married couple-in-training and a few other friends for a very chill and laid-back celebration of the ending of '08.