2009 Wrap-Up, continued
When we last left our hero, he had fucked himself up trying to drag a heavy four-shelf bookcase into his apartment and was dealing with a bloody, stubbed toe and a heavily bruised right arm. The first few days of that were quite unpleasant, since my arm was nearly useless as far as lifting, carrying, or turning went -- I was having to use both hands to start my car or put it in gear. Three weeks later, though, the bookcase has finally been installed in my living room and I'm essentially fully healed, with only an occasional minor twinge when I do something weird.
(My Vaudeville-routine doctor advised me "don't do that," and I feel better already.)
2009 wasn't finished with me yet, though. The day of our first big snowfall in this part of Chicagoland was December 9th, and I managed to get into my first-ever car accident that was serious enough to call police and insurance companies. Heading for home after work, I was driving up Remington Rd towards Meacham and suddenly saw a big silver van pulling out of a parking lot at the top of a hill. The driveway leading down onto Remington has an extremely steep grade, and by the time the guy started braking gravity had done its wicked work and sent him sliding into the street.
Since the road hadn't been plowed yet, it was slippery enough that I couldn't stop either, and we collided in front of the parking lot. Nobody was hurt, since neither of us were going very fast, but my car struck his van right smack in the driver's side rear tire, and both tire and wheel came off. All I ended up with was a little front-end damage on the passenger side and a headlight that won't turn on, although it took me a day or two to realize the latter. On the advice of my brother (
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
am_hollitz, who doubles as my insurance agent) I called the other driver's insurance company first, so that nobody could claim I had tacitly admitted fault if he decided to try and pin it on me.
That call to GEICO got me nowhere, though, so I wound up filing a claim against my collision insurance. The estimate was about $1750 and my deductible is $500, which I'd been hoping not to part with. Ordinarily I will just let minor cosmetic damage ride (I've scraped up a bumper or two in my time) rather than shell out for body work, because I tend to drive my cars until they're essentially unsellable anyway. But with a knocked-out headlight that's not really an option this time, so I guess I'm OK with the insurance company covering 5/7ths of the repair. My coverage even gives me a $50/day rental car allowance for up to 30 days, so the only real inconvenience left is scheduling the repair and making sure the rat-bastards don't tow the rental car out of my parking lot. Both could prove challenging during this holiday season.
Other than that, I made it to Christmas Day in one piece. Since Adam and Ryan (a.k.a.
chipb0i) are driving down to Texas this weekend to spend time with Ryan's folks, we did a Christmas Eve brunch at my folks' house and exchanged gifts yesterday. Kody and Riley (my parents' dogs, a Samoyed and an American Eskimo respectively) were excited and bouncy, like they always are when we come over, but unusually energetic even for them, because it's usually evening when we visit. I got a pretty good haul this year, too:
I also got some gifts for myself earlier this month while shopping for others, including a new DualShock controller since the two others I have each have a non-functional L1 and R3 button, respectively; I also grabbed
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 while I was at Best Buy, and
samueljl clued me into the fact that a new boxed set of
Farscape: The Complete Series had finally been released, so I picked that up as well.
Since I finished the family-gathering portion of the holiday extra early and had already laid in groceries and supplies on Tuesday, I'd planned a two-day orgy of couch potatoing, since I won't have to leave the house again until Saturday evening when I take care of my grandmother's mail and garbage for her. Alas, the ice storm last night knocked out my power five or six times in a four-hour period, and by the time it was fixed for good, I'd had enough and was curled up with
Small Gods, where I stayed until bedtime.
The storm claimed a second casualty besides my Christmas Eve plans, too: one of my cherished and long-suffering
Farscape VHS tapes had been loaded into the TV-VCR combo in my bedroom, and the multiple power outages caused it to get stuck. The fail-safe on the unit was causing it to shut off as soon as it tried to get the tape out, and since that's my PS2 monitor, I couldn't play video games without digging it out. It didn't survive the process, which is sort of a shame, but on the bright side it resolves the question of what to do with the rest of my
Farscape tapes now that I own it on DVD.
That brings us to today, which in addition to being Christmas Day, is also Oreo's 7th birthday. Happy birthday Oreo!
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good weekend!
--- Ajax.
Current Music: Joan Jett & Paul Westerberg -- Let's Do It 
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