The Ninth Strange Day

Returned the Equinox to trade for a smaller car. The guy looked at the car, looked at the contract, and said “These scratches aren’t indicated on the form. I’m going to have to file a claim.”

“Wait, what?”

“Those deep gouges in the bumper. I can’t let you have another car until I file a claim and you pay the deductible.”

The scratches are horizontal, roughly here, and from a distance looks like whitish mud on the grey plastic. They might’ve been there the whole time. I don’t know. I never noticed them. The thing is, there’s no damage marked on the contract I signed, therefore I have to pay the deductible and a claim was filed.

That’s now the second claim to my insurance in 22 days.

I’m really screwed, aren’t I.

Kitti thinks I should call the rental place and complain. I don’t remember if the guy did a walk-around of the car on Friday (I had to swap the car I had originally for the car I just turned in because the check engine light came on) or not. I said it doesn’t matter, because I initialed the contract that did not have any damage marked, and that is what everyone will go by. It doesn’t matter what did or didn’t happen; I signed a contract that had no damage indicated and agreed to the coverage policies (i.e., that I was using my insurance and not their coverage at a cost of something like an extra $10/day).

Maybe I’ll quit my job and work as a cashier at the Royal Farms. Then I can walk to work and not have to worry about cars and car insurance at all.

I need to think of a good “backronym” for nerd.

So. Balticon is coming up really fast and it looks like we’ll be there on Saturday, at least in the afternoon, evening, and night. Dealers’ room, art show, and masquerade. No staying over. Not with the puppy at home. That makes me sad, but at least one day is better than nothing.

We’re going to Shore Leave this year for the first time! Again, just on the Saturday. I mean, how much time does one need to stalk David Hewlett…. I mean…. Wait, no. That is what I meant.

Moving on!

A long time ago this journal was at http://dataangel.net. I still have the domain (obviously) and have turned it into a “portal” of really useless information - feeds and things. No reason, except because I could.

Okay, it’s sort of a portal. It pulls through to a journal on Blogspot that is the actual portal, because editing the layout to include the RSS feeds and things was easier that way. I’m a nerd, but I’m a lazy nerd. I’m also a lazy nerd with a feeling of satisfaction because it actually worked.

Now if I could feel smugly satisfied about “Ace of Wands”, I’d really be getting somewhere. The deadline looms for that, and I’m about 60% of the way to the end. If you don’t see/hear from me much between now and next weekend, you can assume I’m writing my fingers to the bone.

Last (and least), the rental car is due back on the 21st. I’m not really sure what I’m going to do about getting places after that. I refuse to take the light rail. I’ll probably just have to get another rental car at the full rate. Hopefully this time I can get something that’s actually sensible, because the Equinox is killing me on gas. Since the first of May I’ve spent $150 on gas. With the Prius, I think I spent $150 in gas over the first three months.

Please invest in a few more street signs? We got lost going to the Patriot Center. What should have been a seven minute drive turned into half an hour. It took about 40 minutes to go back to the hotel.

MapQuest is partly to blame. I really think some of their distance estimates are based on “as the crow flies” and not “as the road twists”. The fact that there weren’t a lot of signs that said things like “this way to 29S/50W” didn’t help the situation. Especially since we were on what looked like a twisty, wind-y, two-lane road into Stephen King-land and we were certain we missed the turn we needed.

“But Nine,” you may be thinking, “don’t you have a spiffy Prius with spiffy navigation? How is it possible that you got lost with such a wondrous thing?”

Erh. Yeah.

See… at the end of April, I was in a car accident. My car was hit and is currently out of commission. I’m fine and the car is (most likely) fixable, but it means I’m driving a rental car right now, and this car doesn’t have super magical navigation powers.

So a few more street signs would’ve been nice.

Getting lost was worth it, though.

18 pictures (so far) on Flickr. There’ll be stuff on YouTube later.