Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Just call me Crash* sigh

Well I don’t really have any new pictures to post. They finished the garage and basement floor last week but that’s not really too exciting to the casual observer. I may post pictures of Kitten *helping* me pack and they should start on the deck (?) or flooring this week so framing up shouldn’t be too far behind. The big news is that I got into a car wreck last Monday on 270. With all the traffic and crazy people it is inevitable I suppose. The kicker is I was being cautious and still got in a mess. I was past 71 and not quite to Westerville going a mere 50 mph because it was raining and we were getting close to the bottleneck near Minerva Park. Anyway I was about two cars behind this Volvo that hit its breaks. I hit my breaks but didn’t slam them because you know, sometimes people tap their brakes and then go right on. When I saw the left hand turn signal I though, uh-oh this must be bad. The Volvo tried to get into another lane but as I had observed, we were boxed in. As the car swerved though I did see a car in front of her at a dead stop and I found this baffling because all the lanes of traffic were going smoothly. I am long in the habit of watching the flow of traffic beside me as well as in front of me and I always am looking out for strings of brake lights ahead of me. So at this point I am punching down on the brakes and start to skid. My butt end of the car starts going to toward the lane to the right and I thought…oh this is bad! In a detached kind of way. I don’t remember consciously steering into the skid but the car straightened itself out just in time to ram the Volvo in front of me. The original standstill vehicle was at this point of course, long gone.

Yes I am okay, yes the other lady is okay and her car, is fine, trust me. My car, got crunched pretty badly. New hood, new bumper and ironically enough a new air conditioner which I had fixed I kid you not, not two weeks before said accident. I got cited but not for recklessness the lady ahead of me told the officer what happened (and mom thinks there is a chance maybe she wasn’t paying attention to the first car and that is why she slammed on her brakes so suddenly.) Anyway it was agreed that I wasn’t going some unreasonable crazy speed like so many folks do on 270—I still got cited of course, so had to pay a fine and of course I got points on my license which I have never had before and am quite appalled about but I know I know, I am fine and that’s all that is important. Just the day after a poor lady got killed not 6 miles from where I was at and the police suspected a third party involvement so I am lucky. We’ve been sitting tight all week, worried they were going to total it but they aren’t woohoo! No I can keep my ridiculously low car payment a while longer. I would like to resale it next summer and try to get a pre-owned hybrid if the price goes down. With all the driving we do gas is going to kill us as it is with Andrew’s blazer. He looks forward to a hybrid SUV. I know that he likes being able to stretch out in the truck after being used to driving such smaller cars and getting jobs closer to home may not be a reality for some time.

There really isn’t any other news. Work, school, sleep, house. We did go to the Champaign County fair last week and I found out I can eat sugar waffles (hurray) and I got to go down memory lane with Andrew. God bless him, he didn’t appear the slightest bit bored as I explained to him the inner workings of 4-H life. I do miss it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

okay, maybe I'm dumb but... why'd they cite you?