Got my car from the tow yard, and had it towed to the Honda dealer for theft recovery service (safety inspection and damage estimate). In my case, "lightly stripped, not burned" means "They drove it their chop shop, removed the leather seats (front and back), removed the leather door panels, removed the rear speakers, yanked the console cover off but didn't take the radio or in-dash CD, removed my baskets full of clean laundry from the trunk, and removed the nice factory wheels. Then they slapped on some miniature spare wheels with just a couple of wheel bolts each, and threw in old cigarette-stained cloth seats to sit on briefly (not even mounted to the seat rails), and drove it far enough to discard it." At first glance the exterior is unharmed and there is no obvious visual damage in the engine compartment.

The dealer will inspect and estimate for damage, and the insurance company will then decide whether to repair it or consider it totaled and pay me for the car.

I am trying not to get too bummed out about this, and to look at it in a positive light: I figure if the car is totaled then it's simply forcing me to "sell" the car (to the insurance company) a little before the Boxster is here to replace it. (Of course, what I do in the meantime is a question, and I had by no means decided to sell the Accord once I got the Boxster, because it might have been a fine 2nd car for my purposes. This sort of forces my hand on the 2nd car issue.) Perhaps the worst part is my stolen laundry! I keep discovering additional pieces of missing favorite clothing that are now gone for good (bad, that is).

Actually, by far the worst part is the handful of cassette tapes gone from the car, which were a sort of guitar sketchbook of mine -- unfinished raw guitar part ideas I've been recording whenever they pop into my head or I'm just playing around on the guitar. Some I still have in my head, but the rest are lost like steam vaporizing into the air, unique little bits of music gone missing.