Car Troubles

And on an unrelated note, we got our car back today. It had been off in the body shop for over a week and a half, after a school bus took it out. Fortunately, the car was parked on campus and we were safely in our offices, but it was still traumatic to come out and find the back half of our car missing.

We were a little ticked at Campus Security for neither securing the vehicle nor phoning us with a heads up. We only found out the car had been totaled when a colleague recognized it on the way into the office and told Mary. Otherwise we would have come out with ten minutes to spare to pick up the kids from school and day care and found we had no car. Worse yet, since the back had been smashed completely open, all our stuff -- including student papers and confidential research materials -- were exposed and vulnerable. (Fortunately, no portable computers in the car that day.) The bus driver had contacted security right away, but they do not seem to have followed up at all. So which is the higher priority here, securing an accident scene or handing out parking tickets?

I was greatly relieved when the insurance people decided to fix rather than write off the car, as we had originally feared would be the case, seeing the damage. The book value of the car in no way reflects replacement value, especially since our car had been in much better shape standard for that year and model. We could not afford a new car or even a similar used car at the moment, so big relief that the car could be fixed.

We rented a replacement for the time we were without a car, and it was okay, but lots of minor annoyances -- trying to fit three child seats (we regularly pick up a third child as part of a car pool deal) into a standard "full sized" car is a real pain, so glad to get old car back, even if it is not quite as peppy as the new one was.