I have one rule: New is always better.

Yesterday I said good bye to a long time friend. This was my baby. I bought her when I was going to school in NY, and then decided to move home less than 2 months later. So we spent 3 days driving cross country back to AZ. I loved my Volvo but she wasn't a young lady anymore... 2003 with over 105k miles. It was getting to where I was going to have to start doing preventative maintenance and I really just wasn't ready for that kind of investment in a car I knew I would be getting out of sooner rather than later.

I've been researching cars online for awhile now, but you can only get so much reading reviews and looking at pictures so yesterday B and I decided to go test drive some of my favorites. Let me just say, car shopping in July in Arizona is possibly the worst idea ever. We stopped by Chevy and I looked at the Cruze and the Equinox. I liked them both and the Cruze was a serious contender. My little sis has one and she loves it. I looked at an upgraded one with remote start and a few other cool features. We went over to Buick to look at the Verano and I may have fallen in love. The guy we worked with was awesome, he got me into the Verano for the exact same price that I would've gotten into the Cruze for but I have leather seats, a rear view camera, satellite radio, Pandora connectivity and the remote start that I really wanted to have. Haven't had a chance to drive it yet, but I love it so far. I did sacrifice on fuel economy over the Cruze but it is a much smoother ride. And it is an automatic! After nearly 5 years of driving stick its a welcome change! I'll post a better picture later but that's from the dealer site. Love it!