Holy crap, I got into another accident. As if breaking my light and denting my car last time wasn’t enough! (All that got fixed for under $100, fortunately.) This time, there was basically no damage to my car. It might have scuffed the paint a little, but that mark might have already been there, I’m not sure. I was backing out of a parking space and a pickup truck materialized behind me. I swear. My bumper dented his rear right corner just a bit. It’s the kind of thing that you see cars driving around with all the time, but we exchanged insurance information so I assume he’s going to file a claim. I already called USAA and notified them; the guy couldn’t promise anything but he sounded pretty sure my premium wouldn’t go up, since this is my first accident…with them…that they know about. Will I ever grow out of the days of countless bumps and scrapes? Will I ever end up in an accident so bad I am injured? On the way out of the city, I saw a six-car pileup, and that made me feel a little bit better. I only felt unhappy for a couple of hours; those people had their whole weekend ruined.

I got home about 1:00am and found that :MK: - my wife’s sister, who lives with us, in case you haven’t heard me mention that a million times before - had parked down the driveway. Now, normally A and I park down the driveway, and MK&R park on the street. During splatter-berry season, they park on the cross-street, because there is nowhere to park on the street where their cars will not be pummeled with messy sticky berries. On Friday night I had to park on the street because :MK: had allowed utility people to park on our driveway because she didn’t know I would be coming home so early. (It happens that they were there until after I would have normally been home, so being early didn’t actually have anything to do with it.) But my white car got all splatted up, and I need to find a car wash at some point.

Anyway, I pulled down the driveway and blocked her car and A’s car in because I was too damn tired and my feet hurt too damn much to park on the street or the cross-street. I went in and checked :MK:’s work schedule…she had to work Sunday morning. And she leaves at 5:30am. I started to write a note asking her to please move my car when she had to leave, but I didn’t want it parked on the street, so could she also move mine back down after she had moved hers up, etc. I decided that was too complicated and I should just do it myself. But I didn’t want to do the complicated stuff, so I got the brilliant idea into my head that I would move my car onto the lawn, back hers up a bit, and then move mine into its normal spot.

Yeah, that whole “onto the lawn thing” I just mentioned? Not very bright. Because, you see, I could not then get my car OFF the lawn. I ended up ripping giant holes in our lawn and the neighbors’ lawn, because I was desperately seeking a way back onto a paved surface. It was 1:00am, I was exhausted, my feet hurt, and I was really pissed that :MK: had parked down the driveway on a day when she’d have to leave for work at 5:30am. Once the cars had finally switched places - and as I came in I could see huge gashes in the lawns - I left her a note saying please do not park down the driveway unless I am out of town. Because, really, it is my parking space. If she has to bring in something heavy, I don’t mind if she pulls down the driveway to bring it in and then backs out again. But for her to park down the driveway because she is too goddamn lazy is just not okay with me. I woke up A and she agreed that it’s my parking space. (See, she owns the house, and I am her partner, and MK&R are tenants. Hence me getting the good parking space.)

Anyway, I was just absolutely furious, and I had to take one of A’s Ativan so I could calm down enough to get to sleep. Fortunately I was very tired, so I managed to fall asleep pretty quickly. Unfortunately I had a crummy day on Sunday because :MK: and I were upset with each other all day, and I’m having another crummy day today because tonight I have to go over to the neighbors’ house and apologize and offer to reseed their lawn, which I don’t know how to do. (Yes, I’ve printed instructions off the internet.) So I generally had a bad weekend, you could say.

I know all I’ve been talking about lately is my car and college. Well, the car is pretty much taken care of. I got my registration and title yesterday, and today I went to the Pass & ID Office and got the new DOD decals that make my car truly official again. Tonight I will put on my new plates. The bumper sticker I ordered still hasn’t arrived (shipped on 11/2/06) but I happened upon a whole bag of other stickers I might decide to use.

My college application is sent. *falls over* It’s hard for me to describe how scary it is to be applying to college 10 years after the first time. I hope I get in. I heard back about the SAT scores; apparently you need to have 12 credit hours and some of those might have to be Math and English in order to avoid needing the SAT scores. I can’t tell from the fee table if the $17.50 “retrieval fee for archived scores” is just for them to find it, and I’d have to pay the additional $9.50 to have it sent out, or…I dunno. I am going to wait until Gallaudet tells me if they need those scores or not. I took the AP English test when I was in high school so I “tested out” of English 101, and I got a low grade in English 102, but I took it…I don’t remember what my math situation was. But anyway, the application has been sent, transcripts have been requested from high school, college, and the ITP program I was in for fall 2003 - I got a 4.0 so hopefully that will be attractive to Gallaudet. One of the recommendation forms has been sent to the person who’s filling it out for me, and I’ll be handing the other forms to my supervisor at my annual review on Friday.

My annual review is on Friday?! I need to focus on that for a while.

I’ve got two sets of papers I’m working on right now.

The first is the title and registration documents for my car. The PDF forms from the website were fillable, so everything is all nice and tidy except for the handwritten parts of the sale price form. I hope I haven’t left anything out; I’m planning to go to the DMV after work tomorrow and then hopefully by Wednesday morning I will be able to get replacement DOD stickers for my car so the guards don’t have to keep peering at my temporary parking pass every morning. I’ll also be able to get on base if I need to, which I haven’t been able to do for a couple of months now.

The other forms are my application to Gallaudet. I’m trying to figure out how to handle being a returning student. I can have my transcripts sent from WMC (freshman year) and NOVA (evening classes in interpreting), but the application has a section for my high school information. When I e-mailed the admissions department to ask about that, they said “oh, well, they keep records for 10 years, they should still have yours.” So I found the e-mail address for a teacher I knew who is still there, and e-mailed her to ask who I needed to contact to see if they had my information. Hah. The forms also ask for my SAT scores, and those are no longer available online, I have to get them by calling or something. I don’t see why my college transcripts aren’t enough. Fortunately I’ve already got a few people who are willing to write recommendations for me, so at least that’s taken care of.

It is now 1:15am. I am finally back in bed. I had some…adventures. Much getting-lost and going-crazy ensued. Read the rest of this entry »

They wouldn’t let me rent a car this morning. Apparently my check card is not sufficient; I have to have a credit card, even though I use the check card as a credit card all the time. They ran some check on my check card and declined me for a rental, which is absurd because I have plenty of money in my checking account - the most they charge for a deposit is $400. Once I’d been declined, they wouldn’t let me rent a car in any other way, even writing a check - nothing. Fortunately A had stayed to make sure I got the car okay, so she ended up renting the car for herself (the guy sternly told us that I was not allowed to drive it) and I ended up borrowing her car again. This is all quite preposterous, but I may end up getting a credit card and just never using it.

The good news is that we’re going to Six Flags Great Adventure this weekend, just for fun.

I made it to work today without incident, and I dragged myself out to run errands at lunch even though I was afraid of “unnecessary driving.” How long is it going to be before I can drive without fear? I know it was an accident, but I’m afraid of it happening again, and I can’t help it.

I looked at used cars on eBay and Craigslist briefly, but it was too hard. I love my little car, it was so good to me and I killed it. To be honest I really hope it can be repaired, because I don’t WANT a different car. I don’t even want to take things out of A’s trunk…I don’t want to look at the former contents of my car.

I’m trying to pretend that I’m having an okay day. If I hadn’t wrecked my car yesterday, today would have been fine. But as it is, I feel pretty awful.

I wrecked my car today. Oops. I’m fine, though the car is not.

I was on my way to work and I rear-ended a pickup truck in front of me. We were in a long line of cars at a light, and as I went to apply the brake, I hit the accelerator. The front of my car was immediately smashed in and it started smoking as I pulled into the adjacent turn lane. The pickup’s bumper was dented a bit but otherwise fine. We exchanged information, and I was on the phone with A (it’s her car) while the other guy was calling State Farm - fortunately we both have the same insurance, at least.

The police came to take a report, and apparently the county requires them to issue a ticket to somebody. So the officer gave me a $30 ticket for “failure to maintain control of a vehicle” which comes with a $57 processing fee. The tow truck he called brought me to a nearby impound lot, and A arrived to get me a couple of hours later. We don’t know what the car’s fate will be - whether it’s truly totaled, or worth repairing - so I took everything off the car. That included the roof rack (though not the feet, which are vehicle-specific anyway), antenna ball, license plate frame, and the entire contents (including the buttons on the interior roof). A took me to my favorite vegan restaurant for lunch, and then we came home and took a nap. To say I had a rough morning is putting it mildly.

Like I said, I’m physically fine. The airbags didn’t deploy, I wasn’t hurt at all. Tomorrow I’m going to borrow A’s car to get to work, and she’s going to borrow her mom’s car because her mom doesn’t need to go anywhere tomorrow. For Wednesday through Friday I have already set up a reservation through Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which is the first time I’ve rented a car. That’s pretty much all there is to tell.

Today started out bright and early with a woot-off! Normally Woot has one item per day, but during a woot-off they post a new item as soon as the previous one sells out. I had actually dreamed about a woot-off last night (seriously) and I woke up this morning to find they were having one! I actually did end up buying something: a USB 802.11g wifi adapter for $18 incl s/h, to replace the one I swear my brother-in-law broke because he is a big oaf. Anyway, I spent much of the day refreshing at woot.com, it was fun. I also got a couple of 1GB thumb drives for $16 each, one for me and one for A - that was a “side deal” though, not part of the woot-off.

I printed out all of my directions, notes, and cache pages for Philadelphia, and left at a little after 4:30. I hit some really bad traffic starting around Central Ave on the Beltway and continuing all the way to Route 1, which is pretty bad and it put me quite a bit behind schedule - maybe about an hour. I just happened to need to use the bathroom right when I was passing Chesapeake House, which is a rest area with a geocache, so I got out to look and pee. I didn’t find the cache - third time’s gotta be the charm, right? next time? - but I did get a yogurt and a little package of mini Triscuit crackers with mini cut-up cheese squares. Once I took the exit for 495 in Delaware I was in unfamiliar territory, and of course it was dark by the time I was hitting the outskirts of downtown Philadelphia. I managed to find the hotel, but I wasn’t about to pay $36.80/nt for valet parking so I drove around having no idea where I was and just looking for the nearest open parking I could find. I had a map with parking lots and garages marked, but I couldn’t figure out where I was, let alone where the garages were. I ended up parking in a garage at 12th and Filbert, and when I emerged laden with bags (computer bag, clothing/stuff bag, cooler with food, and purse) I was surprised to find my hotel was just across the street! So I had ended up going in almost a complete circle, apparently.

I set up in the room, turned on the TV, and opened up my laptop. I tried using their ethernet cable to hook up to the iBahn free system…and it didn’t work. There was a wifi network called “topofthetower” that I could access, but I couldn’t get any websites from it. I was able to determine from my Sidekick that the entire Wireless Philadelphia website is down, so I guess that’s affecting the connectivity for users, too. It would have been nice to have wifi so I could sit in bed, but I got out my ethernet cable and tried that one. How the heck did I end up in a room with a broken modem? Argh! I spent about 15 minutes on the phone with the iBahn tech support, and he was able to reset my modem - I saw the lights blinking - but I still couldn’t access anything. So I’m typing this in Notepad at 10:30 at night, waiting for the technician to come by. I wonder if they’ll come at a reasonable hour? Meanwhile I have the TV on, my Sidekick in my lap, and Dopewars open. (I’m tempted to just switch to another room, but I won’t go that far - yet.)

Added: It’s 12:20am. After waiting two hours for a tech to show up, I got them to switch me to another room. Guess what? Same problem. Which is weird, because it should be working, I see the lights blinking on the back of my computer where the network cable plugs in, but it still says a network cable is unplugged. I just want to go to sleep, but I need to get directions for going to the workshop tomorrow - the one thing I forgot to do before leaving. So I’m sitting in the lobby of the hotel with my wifi working beautifully as it always does. But fuck if I know what’s wrong with the damn ethernet port. I’m going to get my directions and go to bed; I’ll just have to use my Sidekick otherwise. Maybe tomorrow after the workshop I’ll come back down here…or go geocaching…or to Passional. Something. But damn.

Well, that was fun. We were running errands around town, and everything was going fine. We stopped at one place and both of us went in, and then when we got back in the car it balked at starting but finally relented.

At the next stop, only A had to go in, so I stayed in the car and left it running. After a while I thought “it’s not too hot, I shouldn’t let it idle,” and I turned it off. When A came back out, I went to start it…and got nothing. We called AAA and got an estimate of 90 minutes, so we put up the sunshade and waited. I got the idea to try the engine again, and it tried to start. So a little while later I tried again - and it started!

We drove to A’s parents’ house and unloaded some stuff - without turning off the car - and then I drove to Saturn while A followed in her parents’ car. Mine won’t be seen until Monday morning, unfortunately, but this time they better replace the starter.