California, ebay and nuns.

Dave bought a car last night on ebay. If it was anyone else, this might sound like a rash and impulsive move. But as is true with everything with Dave, it was a carefully calculated and researched decision.

Since my break down two weeks ago Dave has decided that we need a new car. First, we determined that we were not ready to get a mini van just yet. No matter how practical they are, I am not yet ready to make the move to future soccer momness quite yet. We also won't get an SUV because, well, we don't need one and we're cheap when it comes to gas. So we are buying that old, unpopular stand-by from the '70s, the station wagon.

Next he got the Lemon Aide guide and did his reasearch. He determined that we should buy one of three station wagons that was within our price range, etc, etc. So far, this was all pretty normal. We always do this stuff, except when we have a lapse of judgement and let his brother buy us a car.

After this, Dave started hunting for cars on the internet. He did this for his motorbike, too, so I wasn't surprised. I was, however, surprised when he told me last week that he had seen a 2000 Suzuki Esteem up for auction on ebay for $2000. He said it was from California and looked like it was in good shape. He got the serial number thing and checked if it had been in any accidents, which it hadn't. He looked in to bringing the car across the border and calculated how long it would take him to drive home from California and how much it would cost to fly there one way. He determined that if he got the car for under $3200, he could justify the trip and the drive because it would still be cheaper than buying the same car in Canada.

Last night he won the auction for the car for $2700 dollars. He emailed the sellers to pay a down payment and discovered that the car was being sold by a convent of conservative Catholic nuns. It was, in fact, the very convent our friend Brian went to retreat at 4 years ago (he stopped to visit us in B.C. on his way down and tried to convince Dave to drop everything and come with him for a week). They said they will be interested to talk to Dave because they're trying to develop some sort of eccumenical something or another.

In any case, the long and the short of it is that it looks like next week Dave will be flying down to Los Angeles and bussing out to a Catholic convent, where he will visit with the nuns, pick up our new car and drive back across the US to Saskatchewan. How crazy is that? And how jealous am I that I can't go too?