Today sure was fun… 🙂 My insurance company finally cut us a check for my wife’s truck. They gave us about $9,500 for it, and we only owed around $9,000, but after paying our $500 deductible, we still owe about $60. The good news is that I went to the wrecking yard today and took the rims and tires off the truck and put the old ones back on, and took the cd player out and put the stock deck back in. I got cut all over the place from the broken glass inside the truck, though. I layed a blanket over the seat while I was taking the dash apart, and still managed to cut myself in several places. The guys at the wrecking yard were nice enough to let me use their impact wrench, so it only took me about a half hour to change 4 tires, and it probably would have taken me a couple of hours to change them with a regular lug wrench.
Speaking of car accidents, I got in one Monday night. I was on my way home from my company’s Training and Development Conference in Salt Lake and got rear-ended. I was merging from an on-ramp to southbound I-15 (“the Luge”) when the person in front of me suddenly slowed down because there was a semi in the right travel lane, so I hit the brakes hard, and the woman behind me couldn’t slow down enough and plowed into my rear-end. So I tried to pull off closer to the side of the road, but our cars were locked together and I couldn’t go anywhere. For those of you who haven’t traveled in Salt Lake in the past couple years, “the Luge” is the part of I-15 that is 2 lanes each direction, and there is absolutely no shoulder. Each side of the road has a cement barrier, so if there’s a wreck, it will block all traffic until the road is cleared. So anyway, I was stuck in the merge lane, and cars were coming down the on-ramp and having to slam on their brakes to avoid hitting our cars, and we were waiting on the other side of the cement barrier for the highway patrol to come (she called them on her cell phone.) When the UHP finally got there, they helped us separate our vehicles, then had us drive to the next off-ramp so they could take a report without blocking traffic any longer. So when everything was over, she got a ticket for following too close, and I got a ticket for failure to show valid proof of insurance (my insurance company still hasn’t sent me my insurance cards.) My Jeep wasn’t really hurt bad at all…the bumper and tow hitch were bent down about 45 degrees, so they’ll need to be replaced, but the rest of the vehicle is fine. The other woman’s car was totally messed up, though. 🙂 Her hood was buckled pretty badly, both front fenders were damaged, both headlights were broken from their housing, the radiator was pushed back into the fan housing, and the bumper was ready to fall off. I’ll have to take care of the ticket and the damage next week…
I got my state tax refund (for $400) today, and my federal refund should be here soon (another $1,200), so I’m pretty happy about that. It’s certainly a lot better than owing the guv’ment money.