It's official — the Evo is sold, and I'm holding the check in my hands. As much as I loved that car, it's an incredible relief to be rid of the financial burden. I ended up letting it go for $23,000 — a ridiculously low price for that car, especially considering the inflated price of all cars in Puerto Rico. But I'm OK with that. The economy in PR is just not very good right now, and it was pretty clear that most people just couldn't afford to spend that kind of money on a sports car. And I did still get money back above what I owed on the car, so it's hard to feel too upset about the price.

A good portion of this money will go towards paying off the balance on my credit card, which has grown to several thousand dollars with the cost of moving up here and furnishing my new apartment.

Speaking of the apartment, over the past few weeks I've managed to get it pretty well appointed, thanks mostly to Goodwill, Craigslist, and the Student Furniture section of Office Depot. For the living room, I found the previously mentioned orange couch for $50, a pretty nice coffee table for $25, and I just acquired a blue La-z-boy for free from a friend of Bryan's (it totally clashes with the orange couch, but it's hard to complain about free).

In the spare room/office, I combined three $30-50 pieces from Office Depot to form a nice expansive desk for my computer, scanner, photo printer, and related paraphernalia. There's a second desk in my bedroom that I'll use as a surface area for writing, drawing, etc. I've never really had any free desk space before — for the last 15 years or so, any surface area in my room has always been taken up by a computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse. It's so great to finally have some nice, open space.

There is one area where I splurged a bit — movies are important to me, so I decided to set up a nice home theater system. The centerpiece is a 42" Westinghouse LCD 1080p HDTV (maximum resolution of 1920x1080). The surround sound system is a decent Yamaha 5.1 system with 100 watts RMS per channel. The whole thing is housed in a solid hardwood entertainment center that fits the television like a glove. Bryan helped me run the wires for the rear speakers under the carpet, so the result is a very nice-looking setup that I'm really happy with. And, while it obviously wasn't the cheapest way to get a television in the house, I managed to get it all a lot less money than one might expect. Best Buy had a 48-hour sale where I managed to pick up the TV for $250 less than it usually sells, and I bought the entertainment center used from another resident of my apartment complex for a third of what it cost new. And the end result is that I giggle with glee when I watch a DVD — and the resolution of DVDs is only 540p. The TV is capable of twice that — now I'm eager to get signed up for HDTV.

This whole moving-in process has taught me that, while living on the third floor is a major inconvenience when carrying heavy furniture and appliances up the stairs, there is one upside: box disposal is way more fun.