I sold my car today. The wife and I are moving to Oakland in a few weeks and my car has been on the downhill side of functional for the past few years now--finally giving up the ghost just before Christmas. We were on the fence for a while, deciding whether we should fix it up and try to eke out a few thousand more miles out of it, donate it to a good cause, or just sell it and pocket the meager amount of cash we could get for it. After considering our options, we decided to go with the third choice, if for no other reason than the money we get in the transaction will help pay for our move.

But man am I bummed about this. Certainly, it's partially due to my tendendency to become sentimental about my possessions; but this was my car. The car that I hauled on the back of U-Haul truck from Atlanta to California back in 1998, only to have the U-Haul break down in Las Cruces, New Mexico roughly halfway through the move. The car I scratched up after inadvertently scraping a post at the Sutter/Stockton garage in San Francisco--two days after I'd gotten it back from the body shop repairing a ding in nearly the exact same spot. The car that I drove to nearly every major state prison in Northern and Central California when I worked for PacBell (ask me how I got locked in a telecommunications room in San Quentin some time...)

This was my car; now it's someone else's car. And in a way, that really sucks.

On the other hand, if there's any money left after our move, you can bet it will be going towards a new PSP...