Saw The Two Towers this evening. Wow. All I can say is now I want to see the extended cut and The Return of the King, but I guess I’ll have to wait another 12 months for that…

I’m sorry, but there’s really no excuse for a message like this:

  An error has occurred (error = -36).

If you’re going to go to the trouble of informing the user that something went wrong, at least tell them what happened. Geez.

So I go the letter yesterday for the insurance company of the guy who didn’t stop until my rear bumper stopped him… Basically, in cryptic legalese they said “Sorry, but the deadbea…er, former customer of ours who hit you didn’t bother to pay his premiums, so we cancelled his policy and we’re certainly not going to fix your car”. Nice.

My next move (after I called and finally spoke with a human at this so-called insurance company after not getting a return phone call for a week) was to call my insurance agent. Five minutes later I had a claim number, the body shop called me to make sure they didn’t need to come get the car, and the rental was already set up. I dropped the crunched bug off this morning and should know by the end of the day how long I’ll be driving a Chevy Cavalier. Proved again: you often get what you pay for. Just about every time I’ve dealt with my insurance company (State Farm, where I have not only auto, but home and life insurance policies), I’ve been surprised at their level of proactive customer service.

Hopefully the repairs will only take a week or two. This rental, while similar to my Bug in that it has four wheels and an engine, reminds me why Detroit doesn’t get as much business as they used to…

We put the Christmas tree up last night. All the kids put ornaments on the tree, so much so that we thought it might fall over because they were all putting them on the same side about 3 feet from the bottom. I had to distribute some of the heavier ones to balance the load. We also distributed (somewhat evenly) more Christmas Season Paraphernalia ™ around the house so that we’re almost completely “seasonally appropriate” now. Only big thing left would be the twinkle-y lights outside.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Ouch.

So I got a Jury Summons for yesterday a few weeks ago. I went, sat around for a couple of hours and ultimately was selected to be a juror (one of six) on a Theft trial. So I showed up at 9:00 this morning as instructed, sat around for almost another hour, and then was led into the courtroom by the bailff along with my other five partner jurors. Immediately the defense attorney made a motion to wave trial-by-jury and go straight to a trial-by-judge. “Thank you very much, go home” I was told. What an anti-climax. After the pain of waiting around to be selected or not, and having never served before, I was sort of interested in hearing the case. Oh well.