Jami's latest new old car

Recap: while we were still waiting for the insurance payoff for the 2010 Yaris, Jami's new 2010 Prius got crunched by crazed Taco Bell-exiting teens.  Jami had held out hope that the insurance would pay to fix the Prius, because, unlike the Yaris, it was comparatively new and expensive, and so it might cost them more to replace it than to fix it, but alas, we got the call this morning that they decided it was a writeoff.  This meant that she had immediately to return the free loaner car (a "champagne" Buick of some kind that handled like a boat) and pick up the plates, at which point she would be without a car.  What is more, we awoke to a world that looked like this:

And that was before the serious snow started.  So we platooned (along with a just-out-of-bed Frederick) to the body shop on Saginaw to pay our respects to the Prius and get the plate:

On the drive over I discovered that the brakes on my car were not working at all well in the snow and ice, and I was very worried about Jami driving down to Detroit to her law class tonight in that car.  So I suggested that instead we go and get her a new car.  It took her strangely little time to see the wisdom of my words and we found that Honda of Grand Blanc had a lot more reasonably-priced cars than Toyota (which still had a $6K 2008 Prius on its website, but a phone call revealed it had been snapped up).  It was a toss up between a 2003 Honda Element (I love the look of them, but Dave at Honda said it had been washed out inside with a hose and this tends to ruin the wiring) and a 2009 Nissan Versa.  We settled on the latter, and after some financial finagling (we're in a bit of a hole thanks to the much pricier now-ex Prius) she drove it home.

Oh, and we finally cleared out the garage for the Winter, so we could tuck our cars up cozy for the night.