We have varying theories on what happened today. The first one is that this is karmic payback for being too lazy to ride our bikes and instead taking our car to Starbucks. The second theory (and my current favorite) is that Richard's car was doing its best Robert deNiro impression: "Hey, you wanna piece of me? Yeah? Yeah?", and the other car decided to take up on the dare.

Whichever theory is correct, however, we may never know. All we know is that one minute we were sitting in Starbucks sipping coffee and reading our books, and the next minute a woman burst in the restaurant wanting to know who owned the blue car that had just rolled across the parking lot into another car. Richard, having finished his coffee, meandered outside to see what all the fuss was about, which was when he found out that the car the blue one had rolled into was *his*.

No one is really all that clear on what happened, only that for some odd reason a car which had been sitting quietly in its parking spot suddenly, and without warning, decided to roll away all by itself. Its owner had been in Starbucks as well for a good twenty minutes or so, and the person who saw it said there wasn't anyone else involved. Just this car that decided to go exploring, and managed to smash into ours.

The passenger side doors are dented and scraped, and the back end of the other car was quite scratched. Richard and I figured there was no point in getting angry. After all, it obviously was some kind of weird accident, no one got hurt, the damage is merely cosmetic, and luckily we weren't in any kind of hurry.

Richard called the insurance company when we got home (luckily we'd taken the name and number of the woman who saw it happen because they were rather skeptical til we said we had a witness), and by the afternoon the car had been appraised and we were given a check for that amount, in order to get it fixed. I know nothing of their rates or how they treat their customers, but I now know one thing about this insurance company: Geico is quick to take care of claims. Plus they're even covering the deductible.

We'll probably have to wait to get Richard's car fixed until after we return from the rapidly approaching business trip to Chicago. I figure that ought to give his car a few weeks to ponder the wisdom of being rude to strange cars in parking lots. Maybe next time it will know better.

In other news (news which is probably only interesting to other people who pay mortgages instead of rent), I finally decided to give our bank a call to see whether it would be worth it to refinance at the nice low interest rates, seeing as how we've only had the original mortgage a bit over a year. Slightly more than an hour later I hung up the phone with a newly refinanced loan that drops us down to only 6% with no points. I am completely lost on what points are when it comes to mortgages, but I do at least grasp the concept that having no points is a good thing. It's always nice to drop ones monthly bills by a big chunk o' cash. I think we may just have to celebrate by getting something for the house, like maybe this. We have the perfect place for it on the roof, and it would go perfectly with the stone dragons that flank our front porch. It's our goal to make the neighbors think we're a bit weird, and by golly, this ought to at least get them talking.