My weekend was eventful from the word go.
The festivities started as soon as I left work. I got maybe half a
mile before I was rear-ended. A diagram of what happened looks something
like this:
Basically, I was stopped at approximately the place where one lane
splits into two. This guy suddenly decides that, rather than wait, he’ll
just go ahead and take the curb and try to skinny past me because, hey,
1984 Ford Pickups are tiny cars that can just squeak through anywhere.
Needless to say, he scraped right up the rear of my car.
I, of course, am a little taken aback at the audacity of the driver in
question, but, well, shit happens and it needs to be dealt with. So I
honk my horn at the guy and he stops. I stop my car, start to get out,
and he takes off. Shit.
I start my car back up and floor it to catch up to him. After about a
mile of chasing the guy down, he finally pulls into a 7-11 parking lot.
Turns out it’s a kid, maybe 17 or 18 years old, tops, driving his dad’s
truck. No wonder he claims he “didn’t know he hit me” - he’s gonna get
his ass kicked when he gets home. (How could you not know? My car rocked
back and forth with the force of the impact, so he had to have felt
something…)
Anyway, my car looked only cosmetically damaged… at least it was
still drivable… and I called my insurance company
(Progressive) when I got home.
I could not recommend Progressive Insurance any more than I already do.
These guys rock. The last time I had something happen to my
car, I was very pleasantly
surprised with the speed with which they handled the claim - I mean,
they came to me and got everything taken care of by the next day. The
only thing I had to worry about was getting my car to the body shop.
Yeah, boyeeee.
However, on speaking with the Progressive claims office, it turns out I
have two options - I can either go through my insurance, pay the $250
deductible, and get no rental car while my car’s in the shop or I can
file a claim with the other driver’s insurance -
Farmers - and deal with their overhead but
get a rental car while mine’s being fixed.
I chose to go the Farmers route, since I need to have transportation to
get to work and all. Thus began my call to Farmers.
Around three hours after the accident had happened, this guy still
hadn’t called it in to his insurance, so I filed the claim for him. That
wasn’t the hard part. The hard part starts now because Farmers is this
vast, slow, annoyingly inconvenient company that doesn’t like to pay
out. What I “get” to do now that I’ve filed the claim is: wait two
business days to hear back from the claims adjuster; take my car to
them to have them take pictures and provide an estimate; wait while
they process that all; then get a check that I can pay the auto body
company with. I don’t know how they’re going to arrange the rental car,
but I’m sure I’ll get some piece of shit Ford Escort or something that I
can’t fit into worth a damn.
To sum it up: I’m a little irritated that the whole thing happened. And
that was just Friday night.
Saturday wasn’t too bad. During the day I was pretty lazy and played
some more Kingdom
Hearts,
then that evening Jenn and I went to my parents’ house to watch some
holiday movies. We watched It’s a Very Merry Muppet
Christmas (probably the best Muppet
movie to come out for a loooong time, available only from
ShopNBC.com)
and Planes, Trains and
Automobiles
(okay, so that’s more of a Thanksgiving movie than a Christmas movie,
but still). That was pretty cool, except they always get this damn Papa
Murphy’s stuffed Chicago style
pizza that
seems to have an inordinate amount of onions in it (I’m not an onion
fan). I think next time they come over I’ll have, like, eggplant and
lima beans or something so they finally get it. It’s pretty nasty.
Sunday I played a little more Kingdom Hearts and went to the Winter
Hawks game against Tri-Cities. That was
probably the longest hockey game in history, or at least it felt like
it. I totally wasn’t into it, either. I half-jokingly asked Jenn if she
wanted to go home in the middle of the second period and she was all for
it. In the end, we lost in overtime, so it wasn’t even for a success
that we put up with that crap. It’s unfortunate they can’t get
themselves together this season. While I hope they can pull it out for
the second half of the season, I admit I don’t have a lot of faith.
Besides, I’m thinking if they don’t make it to playoffs, that’s money I
don’t have to spend on the tickets. :)
And now it’s Monday, and I have lots to do. I still haven’t bought
Jenn’s Christmas gift(s), only because she can’t tell me anything she
wants, and the stuff she did say she wanted is now no longer carried by
the store it was sold in, so I’m sort of up a creek. I guess I’ll do my
best; since she doesn’t show any interest in anything in particular, I
suppose the flip side of that is that she can’t complain if she doesn’t
like what she gets.
One positive note: I just checked, and Amazon finally finished
refunding me the money they wrongly charged me for my last order. Yay!