The Invisible Man

Today I bought a new car, which seems incredibly ridiculous to me. I'm not supposed to do something like that! Yet, as I was driving home in my old car thinking "Wow, when I go back to Edmonton it will be my last trip to Edmonton in this car" I couldn't help but feel that somehow I was passing some sort of "rite of passage". A societal landmark, like highschool graduation is supposed to be.
Which makes me think: wow. I graduated from highschool pretty much 4 years ago, and it is now a distant memory, a rather un-impressive achievement in fact. And in 7 months I will graduate from my nursing program which will overshadow the whole car buying thing. What milestones have I got to look forward to after my BScN?? (this may not be clear to you, but it is clear to me that a list is in order):

--in 8 months I will have passed (crosses fingers) my Canadian Registered Nurse Exam (300 multiple choice questions...shudder)
--in 63 months I will have paid off the car that I bought
--in an unknown number of months I will have paid off my student loan
--in 12 months Miss Molly/Nicole will be getting married
--perhaps in 15 months I shall go to Haiti to work with Dr. Mano
--one day maybe I'll go to Europe
--hmmm...in 2010 we talked about having a CBC reunion at the 2010 Vancouver winter Olympics...so we should do that
--and perhaps one day I'll do the other "milestones" of growing up like getting married, buying a house, having kids, etc. Those all sound like fun adventures.

There's so much to look forward to in life, but right now I'm going to live in right now. I'm going to be excited about my new car (who's name is Charlie *pronounced with an accent that makes the 'r' really soft--so it sounds like Claire from Lost is saying it*)!

Now for 2 short stories that make me laugh when I think of them:
1. At work yesterday Heather (who is training me) made me talk to real customers and she would remind me to say something like "Ask how they will be paying" And I would say "How will you be paying?" And it just made me laugh because the poor customer heard everything twice. Once I even repeated what Heather said and then added "I'm really sorry that I'm just parrotting everything she says" And the customer said it was ok, and Heather laughed.

2. Today, my dad came and helped me negotiate for my car, since I would have just taken whatever the original price was not knowing what it was appropriate to ask for. However, when my dad left to go run his errands he told me to agree if the guy would come down another $150.00. So I said my piece and the salesman (Justin) went to talk to the manager, and came back and told me the manager would give me $100 since he has a soft spot for students. So I agreed. And then after Justin was saying that he was surprised his manager had gone for it, and that he had been pretty tough to get to the agreement and I said "Wow, your manager just seems like a really mean man! He's like the banker off of Deal or No Deal...some invisible scary man sitting in an office making decisions!" Justin assured me his manager was in no way a mean man. When I told my mom this story she just laughed and said "You actually told him he was a mean man?" Maybe I shouldn't have said that...but it's how I felt. If you don't want people to think you're mean don't be invisible.