So, Late Post on the Accident

I have not been feeling much up to writing lately.

Well, for a while.  I’ve got a list of stuff I want to write about, but have had little motivation for a few months.  All the posting from Japan must have wiped me out.

Anyway, people may or may not have heard about the fact that I got into an accident on the 19th.  A mere 7 days after getting my car back from a near 3000 dollar repair job.

Here’s the story:

I was driving to work.  Being that I’m on first shift and the job is way out in Brookfield—I want to move to the Milwaukee area, but folk are leery of hiring folk who live as far away as I do and I can’t move until I have a job, and now I have a short term job that I can use as proof of my ability to get to work everyday even with an hour commute—and given the time of year it was rather dark out.  And I can’t use my brights on the interstate and I don’t even like using my brights anyway.

It was also rainy and drizzly out.

I’m driving along and I see some brake lights ahead.  Nothing else unusual in my vision aside from a car on the side of the road with hazards going.  I just assume people are slowing down for the car.

And then, a second or two later a huge black thing appears in the bright area of the road that the headlights on low illuminate directly.  Maybe 50 feet out at most.   I have about half a second to do something, and there’s a car on my left so I start to brake.  I don’t have nearly enough time so I ram the thing at no less than 60mph and the car lurches.  By the time I clear up from wincing the car is making horrid sounds so I pull over.

I was fine.  The car, most definitely, was not.  I get out.  I look under my car.  First I look at the engine part and I don’t see anything too bad.  Just a piece of plastic next to my wheel-well broken off.

Then I look further back and see a pipe hanging off my car. Given how dark everything was, I couldn’t really make much out other than pipe hanging from my car.  On top of that, I don’t even know anything about cars.  I was greatly distressed.  I was sure I’d just ruined my car which I had just emptied my savings on.  And would I even get insurance money?  There wasn’t anyone, aside from myself, who could be blamed for the accident.  Even if I did, would it be enough to cover damages or buy a new car?

I checked out what I had hit.  It was a hunk of semi tire.  A huge hunk.  Biggest I’ve ever seen.  It was, strictly speaking, visible.  But extremely well camouflaged.  I could have seen it, but I didn’t.  Well, I didn’t until it was too late.

As the sun came up and I managed to get a better look at the car, I noticed that it looked like all that had really happened was that the exhaust pipe got ripped off the engine.  Not pretty, but certainly not as bad as it could have been.  So I had been rather overreacting earlier.

Luckily, in the end the tow and the repairs added up to 140.  I’m hoping there isn’t more damaged hidden away somewhere, but the engine itself is under warranty.  It’s still far more than I wanted to pay on repairs after all the other stuff, but I still got by pretty cheaply with what happened.

And I still managed to get to work.  Granted, it was rather late, but I got there.

Right now after another week of driving the car, it sounds fine.

And now, with all my car repair bills, which I’m going to have to borrow money for, I’m wondering how I’m going to get the next LE Touka Gettan DVD which is supposed to come out Oct 31st.  It’s cheaper to get the LEs through amazon.co.jp than any other method I’ve seen, but it still isn’t cheap.  But I’m sitting here going, “if I have money to blow on silly entertainment stuff, I should just borrow less money from mom and dad.”  This is especially true with the current assignment just about to end.

Well, they still have LEs of the first DVD set available so maybe they’ll have more laying about for this one.

Morning Shows

Whenever I have to do driving in the early morning and do not have my own music readily available I am always annoyed by something.  Grealy annoyed.

Morning shows on FM radio.

Practically every station has them.

And they are all the same.

And they are all incredibly annoying.

And they don’t play music.  Why would they when they could have the DJs banter about stupid crap that I don’t care about and pump the station’s special events that I also don’t care about?  Why would I want to listen to music when I can hear DJs talking about how awesome this upcoming event is going to be?  Or, even better, when they talk about mundane stuff from their regular life?  So interesting.  Music has nothing on this.

The worst part is that this isn’t just my favorite station that does this, but all of them seem to, and there really isn’t a difference between the shows.  You could flip between two stations and the only way to tell the difference would be the topic.   Or, if it’s Bob and Brian, by the fact that the show has two guys instead of one male and one female.  They presenters even sound the same.

And when radio stations talk about their morning shows having, “More rock, less talk,” that means that in the space of an hour you have 15 minutes of music, 15 minutes of commercials, and 30 minutes of talk.

I would think that some stations would realize they could get quite an audience if they dumped their morning show and played music.

The best these shows get is when they discuss some news item or talk about some new entertainment thing, but even then it isn’t particularly interesting.   I want music on my music stations and news on my news stations.

These shows just aren’t interesting.  If a few stations had them, that would be cool.  But they all do.  Getting music from the radio in the morning is so freakin’ hard.  And listing to other people talk about random crap isn’t any fun.  In fact, it’s rather boring. Talking about random crap with your friends, family, and coworkers is fun because you are participating.  It’s no fun just being a spectator.

This is also why Lucky Star sucks.