30 before 30

yesterday officially marked 30 days before my 30th birthday. to celebrate the occasion, i have decided to do 30 things before i'm 30- things that i've either never done before, or that i want to do more of, or something in between. it's my 30 before 30, so luckily i get to make the rules :)

#30- buy a new car

in 2001 i was fortunate enough to be given the "red robin" from gaga (my great grandmother). the red robin is a 1996 oldsmobile cutlass supreme. to my amazement it has lasted me through 2011. granted, there were many repairs and thousands of dollars that i sunk into the red robin, but it was all worth it. the red robin saw me through the last 2 years of college, my first (few) job(s), my first apartment, our engagement and wedding, most of grad school, and the purchase of our first house. but, over the past few months the repairs just came to be too much and we've had to just park the red robin for a few months and live with one car, which has been tough. over the past couple of weeks mark and i have been talking about a new car. i've been hesitant given the upcoming, anticipated changes in our lives, but i couldn't deny that having one car while we both commuted has been hard. both mark and i were in agreement about getting a hybrid, and of course, the prius is the best hybrid out there. we also decided that we'd prefer not to buy brand new due to the immediate drop in value and the certified, pre-owned was probably the best choice. after some research with carmax and local toyota dealerships, we decided to make the trek to a dealership about 45 minutes away due to their inventory. fortunately, they also offered us a great trade-in value for the red robin, and we just had to jump at the offer. unfortunately, we didn't drive the red robin to the dealership and just had to cross our fingers that it would make the 45 minute drive today. the dealership was kind enough to let us take the 2009 prius (now officially christened the "silver bullet") home yesterday and drop the red robin this morning. although the coolant leak in the red robin nearly choked mark to death, we made it! before we drove off, i snapped a "goodbye" photo with the red robin:

it was sad, but has been a long time coming. to make me feel a bit better, i also decided to snap a photo with the silver bullet:

the silver bullet is fantastic and i officially love it already. since this is my first purchase of a new-ish car, we'll categorize this under "things i've never done before"

#29- have more people over

although #29 happened on the same day as #30, i am not going to consider that cheating. since mark and i moved into our new house at the end of last august, we only really started hosting and having people over around christmas when we felt the house was finally in a decent working order. since then we've tried to host a bit more and have more people over whenever we can, and we want to continue the trend. last night we were fortunate enough to be able to host dinner for our friends hannah  and rob. hannah is a friend of mine from school, and our bond of friendship was fortified last summer as we both had to endure two painful classes- our digitization class and our cultural consumption of early america class. both were horrible and although i try to block them out from my mind, i'm glad that i was able to meet hannah through them. rob is hannah's lovely hubby, who is also an amazingly impressive runner. when rob talks about his marathon times, i just smile and nod, since it blows my mind that he can run that fast and i'm ashamed to tell him my times- ha!

anyway, hannah and rob live on capitol hill in dc but were kind enough to make the trek out to edgewater last night for a taco feast. although i didn't snap any photos, all of us had a great time catching up, building a fire, chatting, and eating until we couldn't eat anymore (well, at least i ate myself into a food coma). so, although this is only the first in a greater series of instances of hosting, we're off to a great start!