Costco Socks
There is a great song called "Costco Socks" by Johnny Hickman (guitarist of the group Cracker). The song is about how everyone in America drives these huge cars and goes to warehouse-type stores to buy everything in bulk and just basically how things are becoming so BIG. Since we don't have a membership to Costco but we do have one to Sam's Club, we went off this morning to become exactly who the song was describing.
We have trouble shopping sometimes now that we have two kids. When we all go as a family, Greg and I usually each take a cart with a kid in it and we start getting what we need. This doesn't just happen at Sam's Club but also has been known to happen at Target too. The issue is that we often forget that just because we have two carts that we can fill up, it doesn't mean that we can fit two carts worth of stuff in our car. We always take the Matrix on these shopping trips. (The Matrix is Greg's car, a car that he likes to call a "sport wagon" only because that sounds cooler than calling it a station wagon even though that is what it really is.) We end up packing the back of the Matrix from floor to ceiling and still have to put stuff on the floor in the back seat where the kids are sitting. During our last trip to Sam's Club, we had to open the giant package of paper towels and stuff the individual rolls all over the car so we could fit everything.
Because we were inspired by "Costco Socks" and I had a great desire to drive my new car today, we all piled into our SUV and headed off to Sam's Club. After going up and down every aisle in that place, we had everything on our list and threw in a few more things just because we wanted to see if we could get it all to fit. We got the kids loaded into the car and we started piling our stuff in the back. I think we should have picked up a couple more boxes of diapers and another case of paper towels just because they would have fit in there.
When we got home we decided to see if the thing would fit in our garage. I have at least a half inch on both sides of the mirrors and another full inch on the top of the thing. And just for clarification, I should state that this is MY car. Sure, I don't have a job and Greg is the one paying for the thing, but it is MY car and I am going to make sure that Greg doesn't even drive it much at all. I think this is only fair since he has a tendency to... I don't know, like run my car into the mailbox and knock off mirrors and hubcaps...
Just wanted to talk a little about our car-buying experience because I was too exhausted last night to really go into it. We went to Blue Knob Auto, a place my brother-in-law had told me about. They sell used cars but all newer used cars. I think the oldest ones I saw there were '05's. Most of their cars were previous rentals, leases, or fleet vehicles. I don't think I saw a car on the whole lot that had more than 30,000 miles on it and most have considerably less than that. There is no bargaining of prices (you pay what is on the sticker and the prices are incredibly reasonable) and you don't even really deal with salesmen.
Saturdays are insane there and we were even told that it was slow for a Saturday. A friend emailed me and said that she was told they sell an average of about 70 cars on Saturdays! All their cars are on their website so you can pre-shop and get vehicle history reports on the VIN numbers. Or once you get there you can just look around their lot for whatever you want to test drive. Then you tell a salesman what you want to test drive and they hand over the keys. You are really left to check out whatever and how many cars you want and no one bothers you or even really tries to sell you anything. Greg and I were climbing all around the cars and just being silly and having a good time because there was absolutely no pressure or any strange salesman looking at us.
We were trading in my car so while we looked around they worked up a trade-in value for it, which we thought was a good price. Once we decided what we wanted, we sat down, did some paperwork, and then just waited. That was the only bad part. We had to wait for over an hour between doing two parts of the paperwork. The place was really busy though so that was probably a big part of it. Before we knew it we were handed the keys to the Commander and were passing over the keys to my old faithful Cavalier. In conclusion, if you live anywhere near this place, go there. Enough said.
Okay, this is the last post about my car. I do realize that there are much bigger cars and trucks out there and people have been owning them and driving them and packing them full of Costco socks for many years now. But this is MY car and MY blog and I can write about it if I want to.
We have trouble shopping sometimes now that we have two kids. When we all go as a family, Greg and I usually each take a cart with a kid in it and we start getting what we need. This doesn't just happen at Sam's Club but also has been known to happen at Target too. The issue is that we often forget that just because we have two carts that we can fill up, it doesn't mean that we can fit two carts worth of stuff in our car. We always take the Matrix on these shopping trips. (The Matrix is Greg's car, a car that he likes to call a "sport wagon" only because that sounds cooler than calling it a station wagon even though that is what it really is.) We end up packing the back of the Matrix from floor to ceiling and still have to put stuff on the floor in the back seat where the kids are sitting. During our last trip to Sam's Club, we had to open the giant package of paper towels and stuff the individual rolls all over the car so we could fit everything.
Because we were inspired by "Costco Socks" and I had a great desire to drive my new car today, we all piled into our SUV and headed off to Sam's Club. After going up and down every aisle in that place, we had everything on our list and threw in a few more things just because we wanted to see if we could get it all to fit. We got the kids loaded into the car and we started piling our stuff in the back. I think we should have picked up a couple more boxes of diapers and another case of paper towels just because they would have fit in there.
When we got home we decided to see if the thing would fit in our garage. I have at least a half inch on both sides of the mirrors and another full inch on the top of the thing. And just for clarification, I should state that this is MY car. Sure, I don't have a job and Greg is the one paying for the thing, but it is MY car and I am going to make sure that Greg doesn't even drive it much at all. I think this is only fair since he has a tendency to... I don't know, like run my car into the mailbox and knock off mirrors and hubcaps...
Just wanted to talk a little about our car-buying experience because I was too exhausted last night to really go into it. We went to Blue Knob Auto, a place my brother-in-law had told me about. They sell used cars but all newer used cars. I think the oldest ones I saw there were '05's. Most of their cars were previous rentals, leases, or fleet vehicles. I don't think I saw a car on the whole lot that had more than 30,000 miles on it and most have considerably less than that. There is no bargaining of prices (you pay what is on the sticker and the prices are incredibly reasonable) and you don't even really deal with salesmen.
Saturdays are insane there and we were even told that it was slow for a Saturday. A friend emailed me and said that she was told they sell an average of about 70 cars on Saturdays! All their cars are on their website so you can pre-shop and get vehicle history reports on the VIN numbers. Or once you get there you can just look around their lot for whatever you want to test drive. Then you tell a salesman what you want to test drive and they hand over the keys. You are really left to check out whatever and how many cars you want and no one bothers you or even really tries to sell you anything. Greg and I were climbing all around the cars and just being silly and having a good time because there was absolutely no pressure or any strange salesman looking at us.
We were trading in my car so while we looked around they worked up a trade-in value for it, which we thought was a good price. Once we decided what we wanted, we sat down, did some paperwork, and then just waited. That was the only bad part. We had to wait for over an hour between doing two parts of the paperwork. The place was really busy though so that was probably a big part of it. Before we knew it we were handed the keys to the Commander and were passing over the keys to my old faithful Cavalier. In conclusion, if you live anywhere near this place, go there. Enough said.
Okay, this is the last post about my car. I do realize that there are much bigger cars and trucks out there and people have been owning them and driving them and packing them full of Costco socks for many years now. But this is MY car and MY blog and I can write about it if I want to.
posted by Annie and Greg @ 1:21 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Damn that's a big bag of noodles.
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