The Saga of the Civic: Bad Car Karma?

Okay, there's my little Honda Civic in the background. I apparently never took an actual photo of my faithful commuter car and after finding numerous shots of our hulking Ford Taurus station wagon in the background of many an outdoor shot, I found this snippet of a shot that Tad took of me when I got overrun with card orders one weekend.

So the story starts about 3-4 months ago when the Civic disappeared from the front of the house. I walked out, to go to work, then walked in and asked Tad conversationally where the Civic was.

Together, we walked outside and stared dumbly at the empty spot that it had occupied the night before.

The police were actually great. After finding out that I was on my way in to work, the dispatcher said she'd send a cop out as soon as possible to take my report. The friendly police officer arrived only minutes later.

The report was painless and I was on my way to work without losing much time. I think I was actually only there for about 40 minutes (just long enough to soak up major sympathy points from my coworkers) when he called me to let me know that he'd discovered my vehicle parked only a few blocks away.

Tad walked over with a spare set of keys and retrieved it, none the worse for wear. There was no damage, nothing stolen.

So, about four weeks ago, almost the same thing happened. Walk out, back in. "Honey, where's the Civic?" Dumb stares. Call cops.

This time, however, no friendly cop took it upon himself to drive around the neighborhood looking for the car, but I asked Tad to take a different route home every day and I tried to hit all the side streets in our area. Alas, to no avail. This time, the Civic seemed like it was really gone.

The insurance company seemed eager to settle the claim quickly, so we filled out the necessary paperwork and, in return for the title and all the keys, they sent us a check for what Tad thought to be a fair amount for the car.

While I wasn't happy to be taking on car payments again, I shopped around and picked up a 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid, this one with a good car alarm.

We took possession of the new (to us) car the day before leaving town on a weeklong trip to Southern Oregon. The whole time, I fretted that the unattended vehicle would be stolen also, however, it was still there when we returned yesterday evening.

Today was arguably the first full day that we actually had full possession of the shiny new car and Tad and I took turns driving it about. Sadly, on Tad's turn out, he was sideswiped by another car on Hawthorne, resulting in some nasty scraping all along the driver's side.

!!!!!

Then later in the evening, after dinner, we got a call from some people who realized that the vehicle parked in front of their house for four weeks had been abandoned and found our contact information in the glove compartment and called us.

!!!!

Sadly, if they'd only thought to do this a few weeks ago, it would have saved us a TON of hassle and car payments for the next few years.

But, bright side: all the library books that I'd been fretting about that were inside the car were still there, along with a few stick bug habitats and a few other odds and ends.

Unexpected bonus gift from the thieves: a wicked little pocketknife that must have fallen out of their pocket as they searched the Civic for something more interesting than the scraps of paper and books that they found.

[Sigh]