a car! :DIt's a black Mazda RX-8, and it's pretty hot. I paid cash for it (cash that I had due to a complicated family inheritance that was set aside for me to get a car), so it's paid off, but I'll probably still be shelling out tons of money for maintenance and so on.It's an '04, with 63,000 on the clock, and after three days, so far so good. The trip to get it was a ridiculous adventure. My good friend Pablo, younger brother of Alex, took me up to Oklahoma City to get the car, and he fought sleepiness and the inability to see the entire way up. By 11pm, Pablo and I finished the inspection, did the deal, and I had the keys. Then followed an IHOP run, tons of coffee (on top of our already-consumed Red Bulls), and poor Pablo was damn near blind as a bat by this point in the night, so he followed me home as I tried to get acquainted with my car, and its manual transmission, and the defroster, all at once.Miraculously, we made it home at 3:30am. I spent all of Sunday recovering, and today I took the car out again in earnest to go to my Japanese class.It feels like a sportscar, through and through. It's tough to drive, the ride is unforgiving, and the seats are incredibly bolstered. And in fleeting moments, I feel the tiniest tinge of joy about it all and I begin to crack a smile. My love affair with this car will be immense when it sinks in, but right now I'm still learning my way around the thing.