Wheeee! What recession? I bought a new car today, turning in my 3 1/2-year-old, black Lexus IS 250 for a brand-new, black Lexus IS 250.

It could make a certain amount of financial sense to buy a new car now in a fuzzy logic kind of way - a combination of a good used car's resale value in this market and the incentives dealers are adding for new cars. But actually, it's just that the old car was on a lease and that the lease had expired six months ago - and my friendly, neighborhood Lexus dealer wanted the car back since last Thanksgiving. And I didn't want to buy a 3 1/2-year-old car back from myself and be still making payments when the car was 6 1/2 years old. So I basically just extended the lease another 3 years, and got a nearly identical but brand spanking new vehicle in the process.

Which is a little anti-climactic. It was nice driving home in my new car, watching the odometer roll over to 15 miles, but the model is so familiar (even though it does have that coveted new-car smell), that it didn't feel all that special.

So this is probably a good move for a lay Buddhist monk - to recognize the old in something new, and to temper the materialist desire with drab familiarity, even while giving in to that very impulse.