Damn

It occurs to me that I am moving away from Wisconsin in 16 days. I'll spend a few days in Arkansas and then I'll end up in Texas. That's crazy soon. It also occurs to me that I will be in San Antonio or on a train for 7 of those 16 days. That leaves me with 9 days in Wisconsin to get packed up and see people that I want to see. I'm notoriously bad at seeing people in general, so that will be a challenge.

I got an estimate for my hail damage. I'm told that there is nearly $4,000 in cosmetic damage to my vehicle. The adjustor will come around to give me the official State Farm estimate. Hopefully that will happen early in the week. Then I will need to make a choice. Should we fix the car? Should we just pocket the cash? Should we pocket the cash and trade-in the car? You see, the KBB trade-in value of my car, with damage, is about $7,100 and the value of the car with the repairs is $8,800. It seems to me that it only makes sense to fix the car if I can find someone who can do it for $1,700 or less. If we can't do that, then we either just pocket the money, or we trade the car in for something new. I do like the Honda Fit as well as the Mini Cooper, but if history is any indication, and Underground assures me that it is, I will not get a car for many years. We will use the cash towards the purchase of some sort of car for Mrs. LaBlog and I will drive the Civic until it dies or becomes obsolete. A $16,000 Fit has much better safety features than the Civic and gets slightly better gas mileage. It costs roughly the same amount to insure a 2007 Fit as it does a 2001 Civic. That's true in Wisconsin anyway. I'm not looking forward to paying Texas premiums.