Today has been an improvement. Lora at work offered to stay through morning run and let me go home at midnight last night. I came home, wrote an email to the lawyer, and went to bed. I got about 8 hours of sleep for once. I even got to sleep with my fuzzy old man. Things like that make me happy.

Today, the insurance company called for their phone interview with Corey, to help them "determine liability." About an hour later, I called back, and they gave me the reservation number for our rental car. Woohoo!

We hopped into Dad's Pontiac POS (aka Firebird) and headed to Enterprise. They're not the most professional rental car company, at least, not here, but if we went with Hertz (the only company I really like), we'd have to pay up front and then be reimbursed. Not exactly an option for us at $30/day. But oh, well.

When we finally got to the front of the line, the clerk pulled up our reservation.

"Corey and Shannon Taylor?"

Um. No. Turns out Mr. Insurance Adjuster was looking at two accounts at once, and reserved the car under the right first names and wrong last name. Anyhow, the situation was resolved, and we got our car.

Okay, I just have to get this off of my chest:

The new Impalas are ugly, if you try to think of them as Impalas. And no matter how you look at them, they have creepy eyeball taillights. That said, the 2005 Chevy Impala is a freaking nice damn car. It's a boat, but it's a comfy ride, nice quiet engine, and it looks pretty goddamn good in my driveway.

*sigh*

If you tell anyone I said so, I'll die of shame.

We went out for lunch, and picked up the kids from school. After homework, we took the kids bowling on the $30 gift certificate Corey won at his company's bowling party. We bowled three games, rented three pairs of shoes, bought two sodas, and got out of there for about $10. Fun stuff. I love watching the kids bowl - they crack me up!

We called the insurance company to tell them about the name mix up. Before we hung up, Mr. Adjuster told me that the morons that our insurance company had our van towed to are claiming that our insurance company still hasn't released it to their tow company.

BULLSHIT.

I was personally on the goddamn phone listening to the conversation when our insurance company requested the release of the van.

What the hell is wrong with these people?!? Corey, again, couldn't understand why I was upset. He says it's bound to take a long time to get things taken care of anyway we look at it.

Okay. Granted. But do we really want to delay the process even further due to the incompetence of no less than 4 agencies? GEEZ!

*pfft*

Okay. So back to the rental car. It's like E.T. It's so ugly it's cute. Or something. And I really like driving it. And I'm in love with dual climate control. And the spiffy radio that shows the call letters of the station I'm listening to, and whether it gives traffic reports. And stuff. The only real trouble I have with it is that the hood release is in the spot where the e-brake release is on the van. So I frequently have to get back out of the car and close the hood before I can go anywhere.

(Looka dat, Christine, I used "Or something" and "And stuff" in the same paragraph...tee hee!)

the last trail...the next path