Oh, and, “No.” for those of you I just *know* are asking…power tools were NOT involved…and nobody said anything remotely related to, “Hey ya’ll, watch this!”

Approaching a green light, some left turning traffic ahead slowed things up rapidly and cars stopped short. We got stopped, the car behind us didn’t. It was a fairly substaintial *smack* but not what I would call serious.

Good news is, nobody’s hurt. Not us, not the other driver (Hi Charlie!).

Not even a twinge the next day. In my world, that makes it, “Life is good.”

On to the pics!

Sprung the trunk. The trunk pan is bent, not sure about the lid itself. A handy bungee cord got us home.

Not sure what’s underneath…there are some crushed foam things and such under there.

The left taillight is ruined…all the attatchment points broke off. Duct tape does a good temporary job, and even matches the paint! Not sure about the right taillight.

The bumper took a big hit…this is a plastic cover that has mostly come loose. I’ve no idea what is damaged underneath it.

We’re actually rather embarassed that Da Altima took so much damage…the other car has barely a mark. I suppose it would be bad form to have steel pipe bumpers on Da Altima anyway…even in Texas.

The other insurance company has accepted liability. Da Altima goes in for some poking and prodding about her nether regions on Thursday. We should have an estimate shortly thereafter.

We’re hoping it’s fixable…Da Altima has been a great car and is comfortable and very usable. It gets good mileage, we’ve just barely broken it in anyway (under 80,000 miles), and we’re just not ready to buy another vehicle just yet.

It SHOULD be fixable…the damage doesn’t look that bad and the car is still worth ~$10k on the blue-book…but I’ve seen these things add up to something stupid before.

Hoookay….update…

Da Altima got poked and prodded on Thursday to the tune of about $2300. We turned her over to Service King to get straightened out.

Insurance/Enterprise provided a car for us…it’s a Jeep…thing. Not a Jeep, Jeep…but a Jeep SUV…for little short people…or maybe it’s a tall, fat, short station wagon.

Anyway, nothing overtly wrong with it…but it is surprising that Da Altima has more room for passangers AND cargo (AND gets better mileage).

The Jeep Thing

Also…it doesn’t have a cruise control…which is annoying for long trips.

Oh…’nuther update…
Service King emailed that they found more damage on disassembly (we knew they would…this *always* happens…it’s like a formula romance novel or a game or something…

The trunk lid/deck needs replaced as it is bent, and is aluminum and can’t be fixed. The rear tailight pan is also going to be replaced. The insurance adjuster has already approved the additional parts/work.

If I had to guess we won’t get it back this week.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Pulled all these out of the right shoe.

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer

Yep. Sneakers.

Heh…usually it’s motorcycle boots…but at least they meet the dresscode.

Why the sneakers? Well, it’s about a nail, a wasp, and a prybar. It was swell, but the swelling’s gone down.

I had a rather large pile of used/salvage lumber…these are boards taken out of the house as we remove old, added parts to reconfigure those parts for our use. Principally, the utility room.

Last weekend when we got to the house, we found that the pile of lumber had been blown over.

I figured if I have to restack it anyway, it was time to pull the nails and get rid of the usless stuff (split/cracked/too short to use/etc), so I set to work.

Grab a board out of the scattered pile, pull all the nails, restack it with similiar material (to make it easy to find/use as we reassemble the area), wipe the sweat out of my eyes, and start again.

After a couple hours of this, I picked up a board and somehow managed to annoy the crud out of a red wasp that was hanging about.

He buzzed me. I stepped back. . .right onto a board with a nail sticking up of course.

Ouch. Damn. Right in the front of my foot, about a half-inch behind the toes, right between the pads. Yeesh. At least it didn’t come out of the top of my foot (this time).

So, there I sit, on the porch stairs, trying desperately to pry a board off my foot with a Stanley Wonderbar (they really do work wonders), cursing, and warily eyeing the red wasp buzzing around my head.

Monday I wore my boots to work. Big mistake. The front of my foot had swollen and the boots just made it worse (and hurt like hell).

From Tuesday on I wore the sneakers…the grubby, comfortable, working-on-the-house sneakers…you know the ones.

Ahhh. Finally, today, the swelling is gone.

That’s a good thing. The weekend is nearly here…and I like to get one injury out of the way before I acquire another…

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer