After living in the city for a while and getting around mostly on foot (or public transportation), the time appears to have come for me to get a car.  Alas, I am losing some of my city cred.  Cuz you know, you’re not really city unless you don’t own a car.  There are some places I have to go, though, that public transportation is kind of a hassle for.  Not to mention coming up soon I will have to make a 45 minutes drive a few times a month to go to another office for some managerial type things.  I thought about using something like Zipcar but then I figured no, I’d rather just have infinite freedom and will just get my own car.  It will actually work out kind of well because my condo includes a parking space; I just haven’t ever used it.  If I were going to have to pay for parking then chances are I might be looking at other options.

So the first thing I need to do is find a good used car.  Honestly I’ll probably just get something with good gas mileage.  I’m a girl (STEREOTYPE WARNING) so I don’t really care about having a fancy sports car or something; I just want to be able to get where I need to go.  Honda Civic?  Toyota Corolla?  Now we’re on the right wavelength.

The other thing I’ll need is cheap car insurance in Tampa.  I know that the fact that I live downtown will make it a bit higher than it would be elsewhere, but since I do have an indoor parking space that may lower it a bit since I won’t be parking on the street.  Man, I hate parking on the street.  It’s part of the reason I avoided getting a car when I first moved here, because I knew I didn’t want to drive anywhere because that would either require finding street parking, which is a huge pain, or parking in a garage, which is usually expensive.  But I’m really glad I have a garage spot where I live so at least when I come home I won’t have to worry about trying to find a spot on the street.

On a related note, walking everywhere helps get you in shape.  I’ll walk like 10 blocks to get somewhere now and not even care, but when I first moved here if something was more than like 3 blocks away I’d be like “ugh, it’s so far!”  My legs would hurt when I got there.  But now I enjoy the scenery along the way.