I'm not a very good poster, but I'm a very good reader and commenter. So ha!

Today is an unusually long Monday. Monday is our busiest day at the library due to a ridiculous amount of programming and just general craziness and it isn't helped at all that I started my day so much earlier.

This morning I took my car to the dealership auto body shop because over a month ago (May 22nd - this is my busiest time at work and I haven't had time to deal with this), someone backed into me in the parking garage at work. I was in the aisle, they were leaving the parking space and didn't see me despite me honking at them. Oh well. Totally not my fault and all, but it is still very frustrating. Their insurance is paying for all the fixing which is nice and such. But still it is a pain. So I took my car in and got the renter car. It's a decent enough of a car, but it is so small. And I was jerking myself quite a bit around as I got used to the different feel of the brake and the gas pedal. I shouldn't be so negative, my car is getting fixed and I still have reliable transportation. This one even has a CD player so I can continue to listen to my books on CD. I'm just really used to my car and I rather wish people would stop running into it.

As I was pulling essential items and quasi valuable (and actually valuable items) out of my car, I noticed how many things I have to plug into my cigarette lighter/outlets (of which I have two of up front which is very handy and almost standard anymore). Here's the list:

• cell phone car charger
  
• charging unit for GPS (which also has a windshield mount but can run on batteries)
  
• charger for ipod FM transmitter (the little transmitter can run off the ipod batteries, but it is just as easy to keep it plugged in since it also then charged the ipod)
  
• coffee mug (keeps coffee heated up to a certain degree, there's an LCD display to show your temperature and it has multiple settings for how hot you want your coffee - it's pretty fancy, a birthday gift from my father)

Okay, that doesn't seem like that much now that it is written out, but it felt like a lot of cords at far too early this morning. So that brings me to my participation question/discussion for the afternoon:

How many devices do you have to plug into your car charger outlets?

After all that trouble, I finally have my car back. (This is all following the trouble I had with the drunk driver who hit me.) Last week on Tuesday, I dropped off my car at the dealership body shop to be fixed. It should have been Monday, but I couldn't get a hold of my insurance person to authroize my car rental. Now the original estimate of completion of my car if dropped off on Monday was Friday. They didn't know if that was still possible if it was dropped off on Tuesday. I checked multiple times to insure that they had my cell phone number and work phone number. The car is finished Friday, but they call my parents house to leave a message. I lived with my parents house when I bought the car, they cosigned the car loan, and they are the primary names on the insurance policy, but I double checked that they had MY phone number. By the time my parents got home and checked messages the body shop was closed and I was out of town. Oh well. It was nice to put the mileage of the weekend trip (more about that later) on the rental car and not mine.

But I hated that rental car. It was a cheap little economy car. That's all well and good, but I was greatly reminded of why I upgraded and did not buy a car like that. It had none of the nice little luxuries that I have. No power locks, no little remote for the door, no power window, no CD player (or even cassette player), no cruise control (signifigant because I took it on a road trip) so on and so forth. Basically a very basic car. And it was much much smaller than my car. That was nice to navigate in and out of tight spots and parking (forgotten how much easier that is in a smaller car). And yet not as comfortable as a ride as my Impala. The worst part was the smell. It had previously been rented by a smoker and the car reeked. I smelled by the time I got out of it. I had to febreeze the entire thing multiple times. (An empty cigarette box was found in the glove box). I kept laughing about the car and listing the reasons I wouldn't buy that car. I believe I was up to number seventy-three.

Oh well. I shouldn't complain. I got a rental car and got my very nice (which I now appreciate) car fixed. And insurance took care of all of it minus my deductible (which theoretically I could get back from crazy drunk woman).

All weekend long I could only remember the last two lines of this hymn (bring forth the royal diadem and crown Him Lord of all...) I would sing that over and over and it was driving me nuts. Mom knew what it was and so I leave you with the first verse as my ending quote/lyric. (Remember when I used to do that consistently?) And in case you're wondering a diadem is a crown.
---------------------------------------
All hail the power of Jesus Name
Let angels protrate fall
Bring forth the royal diadem
And crown Him Lord of all!

Well good news on my car. I got the check from the insurance. Took their estimate to the dealer and found that it matched up very well with the estimate from them. They're ordering parts as we speak. I take my car into be fixed on Monday, spend a week driving a rental car around, and get my car back on Friday. Lord willing and the creek don't rise. I am not enjoying this driving around in my car. It doesn't look that bad. From one side you can see no damaged. On the other side you can see my smashed in door, front panel, and missing/jagged mirror. I hate climbing in and out of my car on the passenger side. This is difficult to do modestly in skirts, and it twists my skirt around. Plus I feel like a bad driver, as though this were my fault, when I drive around. I was talking about this with mom and she laughed and said it is hard because you feel like white trash that can't afford to fix the car. I have no idea why I care what people think, I don't really, but I don't like driving around in a wrecked car. It doesn't help that it also needs washed.

Paperwork is overwhelming my desk at home. I don't know how I can get so much mail that needs dealt with. All of the condo's bills are in Sarah's name as she owns it. I get credit card bills, stuff from employer about insurance and the like, junior league stuff, church stuff, etc. Plus I go to meetings, especially for junior league and church stuff and the papers kinda get tossed into piles. I made it through some of the piles last night and sorted them into better places. I'll finish this weekend. I need a filing cabinet or the ability to throw more stuff away. One of the two.

The stupid car wreck thing is a pain. As I knew it would be. It clearly was not my fault, but the insurance thing is messed up. I called my insurance company, my lady is on vacation. Subsitute lady takes my info. (This is friday). Today, my agent calls me back, talks to me, and tells me that clearly the other person is at fault, and gives me the phone number and claim number for their insurance. So I call stupid driver's insurance. We talk for a long time, she gets all the information in the world she needs, and schedules a time for an adjuster to come to see my car. (I've already been to the dealer so I can be forearmed when talking to these people.) It took a while to schedule the adjuster as I tried to convince her that there was no way I was driving to Leavenworth. While it might have only been 24 miles from my house on her computer screen, that is a huge distance from my work place that is already far from my house. And I don't feel like driving in an unfamiliar city and on an unfamiliar highway with no driver's side mirror. Forgive me, but I'm thinking that they should accommodate me and not the other way around. And of course, they keep saying that they are not officially accepting liability. (Legalese of course, it is crystal clear that this is not my fault.) Then, after agreeing to send someone to my work to look at the car, they call back and say that their insured had caused too much damage (or rather that the damage had exceeded their limits, whatever that means) and I need to file with my insurance company who will then file with them. I have no idea what that means - has exceeded their limits - or why this way is better. Whatever. I just want my car fixed. And world peace. But mainly my car fixed without spending the next two weeks on the phone. I'm not holding my breath for either.

As alluded to in my previous entry, here is the full story.

Thursday evening, I was driving home from work looking forward to baking muffins and the return of Grey's Anatomy. I'm sitting at a stoplight on a busy road with heavy traffic. There is this roar behind me and I glance in my driver's side mirror to see this truck rushing towards me. It takes me a moment to process that this person is (1) going to hit me and (2) not coming up from behind in a classic rear end, but driving between the two lanes of stopped traffic. (This is a four lane road). The truck hits my driver's side door with great force, keeps going hitting a car in the lane beside me, and then another car in front of me before stopping. Picture a truck playing ping pong in between two lanes of stopped cars. We all assume that the driver of the truck is waiting for the light to turn green, traffic to move and she'll pull over and do the whole accident thing. To calm my nerves, I am reciting her license plate number to myself. (Repition calms me: sometimes I sing the same song over and over, or repeat a Bible verse, or a series of numbers.)

The light turns green and the pick up truck takes off (still between two lanes of traffic). I (and several other people) roll down our windows and holler that she has to stop to no avail. I whip out my cell phone and make the second 911 call of my life as I'm pulling over and flipping on my hazard lights. After telling the operator that I was not injured, I inform her that there is a crazy and probably drunk person who will surely hit and potentially injure more people. I give a description of the truck and the license plate number to her. I also rattle off the license plate number to another one of the drivers. A minute later a police car whips by in pursuit of crazy driver. The two other drivers who had been hit and one witness and I all exchange the traditional information.

At this point I want to say that I have been cursing drunk drivers. I don't know for a fact that this woman was drunk. But I know she was incapacitated in some way and should never have been allowed to drive. No rational driver would drive between two lanes of cars, weaving recklessly, and hitting them. Everyone knows that the penalties go way up and include jail time if you flee the scene of an accident. This person was drunk, or on medication, or somehow else incapacitated. It was 5:45pm and almost everyone else on the road was on their way home from work, but I'm going to assume that they were drunk for the purpose of this post.

The drivers and I sit and watch multiple police officers drive past us and congregate farther up the road. One driver (non-police) is sitting in the lane beside my car and yells something to us (all on the side of the road clearly waiting for the police) about us getting our due as idiot drivers. Now I'm normally a fairly polite person and don't usually bother arguing with morons, however this was an extra-ordinary circumstances. I yelled back, "we were hit by a drunk you moron!" Not my proudest moment, but I can't say that I feel too badly about it.

Police finally arrive (a call to the non-emergency line reveals that this woman hit a lot of people and they had to call in extra cops). The congregation of police up the road we can see is where she had hit more people and been stopped. The police could not confirm that she was drunk, only that they were testing her. Later, I would drive by and note that her car was there, but she was not, so presumably she was taken away by cop car. They gave us her information and (shockingly to me) she is insured. I never saw her and only know to refer to her as a "she" because the police stopped her and gave me her name.

Friday I had off (since I'm at work on Saturday). Let me tell you this is exactly what I wanted to deal with on my day off. I called my insurance company, quite naturally my insurance agent is on vacation. The other agent took the information and promised me an adjuster will be in touch. Said adjuster didn't call in on Friday. On my father's advice, I took the car in for an estimate so I would be informed when I was talking to the adjuster. The estimate puts it at almost $3,000 worth of damage. My driver's side mirror is gone (and I'm now realizing how often I use that thing, I really had no idea how reliant I am on it), my driver's door is banged up and won't open and some other damages to the front part. It drives but it doesn't look good and I have to crawl in and out the passenger door. I don't like driving this beat up car.

This whole thing is extremely irritating. However, I need to remember the blessings in this mess. If that person had been going a few miles an hour faster, or I'd been in a smaller car, I'd have been hurt. She got me squarely in the driver's door. When car shopping, I test drove smaller cars, and Dad kept insisting he thought this car was best because it was a "solid hunk of Detroit steel" surrounding me. (That is not the only reason I bought this car.) No one else that I could see was injured. After the wreck, before the police came, when I was still shaking in shock and adrenaline, I called my father. I just needed to touch base with a familiar voice, ground myself in the comfort and common sense he offers. He called my mother to tell her, and she insisted that he come down (only a couple of miles from where they live) and be with me at the scene. He arrived right after I left. It was sweet of them, but unnecessary. I did all the grown up things of exchanging information, talking to the police, etc. I may be an adult, but sometimes a girl just has to talk to her daddy for a minute to calm her down.

Things about this that make me proud: I didn't curse, not at the driver when I realize she was leaving, about the situation in general, or at the moron who yelled at us (presumably because we were slowing traffic up in an already very busy area). Second, I haven't cried, fallen apart, anything. I'm just dealing like the competent adult I keep pretending to be.

I'm in lovely Emporia, and I have a few minutes before class starts.

Let's start with your morning news break:

Harsher Underage Gay Sex Laws Struck Down in Kansas Basically there was a man who at age 18 was caught having sex with a 14 year-old man. The 18/14 thing is a bit of a stretch to make the consensual arguement (as opposed to 18/16). So he was sentenced to 17 years in prison, but had his partner been a 14 year-old girl instead of a boy, he would have been sentenced to 15 months. He will now be resentenced with the law treating both crimes as equal. Read the article if you wish to know more. And I am in no way condoning the sexual activity between someone of 18 years of age and someone of 14 years of age, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation. I don't think 14 year-olds can make those decisions independently especially when they're at such a difficult age and can be easily influenced by someone older.

Body of WWII Airman found in glacier I've been following this story for a few days and it is fascinating to me. Usually when you think of glaciers and bodies, you think of the ice men they find from the ancient days. This is someone from sixty years ago. They found the body in California in an area where three airmen disappeared during a training flight. They interviewed the sister of one of the missing men. They'll be able to offer closure to some family. Very cool.

And now back to me...

Like I said, I'm in Emporia. In my class (collection development), there are three other people from my library system here, one from the library I work at. (Yes, I did just end a sentence in a preposition, I could justify it with some linguistic/syntax mumbo jumbo, but no one cares.) So the girl from my library and I went to see the golf movie, The Greatest Game Ever Played. Good movie, even if I know very little about golf. Lots of class conflict stuff. And that cute boy is legal to enjoy looking at, right? Shia LeBeouf who is younger than my sister and brother, 19 years, not great, but never mind.

This morning there was ice on my car! (Keep in mind that last weekend it was in the 80s, record highs. This is the first time that I've had ice on my car yet this season. The problem is that I'm in Emporia. I couldn't find my ice scraper. I turned on the car and the defrosters and tore apart my car looking for the ice scraper. I can't imagine why I would take it out of my car and I don't remember ever doing so. If it doesn't turn up at my house (which seems highly unlikely) than I will just go buy another one. They're about five dollars. I used to have two of them in my car because I owned one and one turned up in my car when I purchased it, presumably left behind by the previous owner. My car has been through a lot this year since the last time I had to scrape ice. That includes a wreck, not my doing and a trip to the shop. During that process I also lost my hands free head set for my cell phone. Oh well, life happens.

I got home from vacation yesterday. I had arranged to pay the girl down the street to watch my turtles. psycho_hedgehog had volunteered to do it, but I couldn't get ahold of her and I like things all wrapped up. So my mom suggested this and I decided it would be okay. We've known this girl for her entire life, and she lives 2 houses away so it would be easy for her. In our house, on our piano, we keep a bowl that holds all the spare keys to our cars. (Do you see where this is going?) I got home, was unpacking, and my mother came up and said we need you outside, take a deep breath. After the second time she told me to take a deep breath, I asked if it was my car. Our garage is full of motorcycles (among other things) so our driveway is full of cars (six cars for five drivers, only one of which went on vacation with us) and so my car ended up parked on the street. We have always worried about the car getting hit on the street, but lots of cars in our neighborhood are parked on the street and there has never been a problem. My car was put outside and on the street because it is fully insured so in the case of a hit and run it would be covered. I got downstairs and outside and the car has been hit on the right front bumper, minor damage, but both air bags have deployed shattering the steering wheel and dash. The dash pushed up against the windshield, shattering that. And it looks like there might be wheel damage, but we can't tell just by looking.

We're sitting their puzzling over how this happened to my car. If it were a hit and run they would have to have gone through our lawn, through some trees, and through the cars in the drive to have hit it at that angle. Plus I thought I had parked the car further up, but this thought isn't totally formed in my head. Here comes down the street my neighbor and her father. She saw the bowl of spare car keys, and took my car out and hit a yield sign. We never even thought of hiding the car keys because we never ever thought of something like this happening. And of all the car keys, my spare set has never been used so it still has the label from the dealer when I bought it that very clearly says what type of car it is and what color. It is unbelievable. She is very contrite. They had already arranged a rental car for me and started talking to shops about fixing it. They said what we did with the police was up to us, but they would pay to fix everything. I had already called for a police officer to file a hit and run report for the insurance. I called and cancelled the officer. She is fifteen, so the charges would have been hitting a traffic sign/reckless driving, driving without a license, and grand theft auto (yes, even though she returned the car, she took it without premission). Plus our insurance rates would have gone up. I don't really want to go to the police and ruin much of this girls life for a mistake she made at fifteen. I'm mad, but they're going to pay to fix things. Kids make dumb mistakes, this happens. I should have gotten Sara to do it, I should have hid the keys, but at the end of the day, this really isn't my fault. Kids that age are stupid, and up to this point this girl has been a good kid. Her parents are punishing her, making her pay back them for the costs of my car, and delaying when she will be getting her license. I drove around today and got estimates on fixing the car. (The people at the dealer can't believe I am not going to the police/insurance). It will take a week to get parts, and a few more days to fix it. I turned down the offer of a rental car and I will use John's (which is no where near as nice as mine) while he is in field training.

This is a very upsetting, trust-shattering thing to have happened. My mother seems amazed I just haven't burst into tears. But I don't see the point in crying. It happened, we're getting it fixed, life goes on. However, I am not paying her for taking care of the turtles.