Category: Life

Sometimes, I feel the need to talk about me (imagine that).

When I awake from my nightly slumber only on the rarest of occasions to I recall dreaming and even when I do briefly recall dreaming; it is even rarer for any of the details to stick in my head long enough for me to write them down. Though oddly enough, during that time I do recall those details I frequently will say to myself; oh yeah, I remember dreaming that before. In any case, when I awoke this very morning; it was from the secret base dream.

Like other dreams I’ve had this one was a repeat; though there were new elements in it this time. The, for the lack of a better word, essence of the dream is a friend of a friend of a friend helped us out when we were needing a new place to live and we’re now renting out a decommissioned spy base. We’ve been living for some time (maybe a few months) and I frequently explore all the passages, hallways and rooms. There seems to be miles and miles of the base to explore. The base has a vaguely similar feel to the Aperture Science Laboratory; in the sense that parts are shiny/new while others are the shiny/newness of 30-50 years ago. Though none of the renting of the base or why we needed a place to live is ever explained in the dream; it’s all just understood in the wacky world of dream logic.

In previous repetitions of this dream, walking around the base is all I get to do. There are rooms with computers and strange machinery but I have no control or access to any of that. Today was different. Down one corridor, there was no a vending machine with an open box of chocolate Twinkies sitting next to it. I grabbed a package from the box, started munching on the snack and continued exploring.

After a going a bit further, I found one of the computer rooms I’d been in before; only this time one of the terminals had a blinking light on it. I tried typing at the terminal but got a access denied message; so I moved along. I found another terminal that seemed active in a new part of the base and tried logging on. Being part of the shiniest/newest section of the base, this terminal accepted voice commands and it gave me a weird form of limited administrator access. I couldn’t seen any files, but I did have full access to anything the machine controlled.

Then for whatever reason, I started back to our living quarters and when I got there; the place was swarming with people in uniforms. They wouldn’t talk to me or answer any questions, but they appeared to be forcefully evicting us; as they grabbed any/all of our stuff they could and started dragging it outside. They also obviously didn’t care about anything they were hauling as stuff kept falling down and breaking. I was getting pretty ticked off and shouted something….. Though I’m not sure what it was anymore.

In any case, remember how I mentioned that one terminal let me in with voice command access? Well, it turns out the entire base is wired for sound and my angry shouts were taken as commands by the base computer. Suddenly the careless thugs were very carefully putting our stuff back and there was a friend of the friends I know there calmly asking some questions and promising to replace all the broken items. In the bizarre way dreams work, it turned out that the reason all the equipment and computers were still here is they contained valuable information that the government wanted; but they hadn’t been able to access an of it. Why then they would allow the base to be rented to a civilian is never brought up; nor was it ever disclosed as to what happened to all the people who previously worked in the base. But they were happy to have my expertise in helping them. 🙂

With my new admin access and the access codes of this friend of my chain of friends; we were able to start copying information from the base computers. This is where two more oddities occurred. First, while the friend of my chain of friends and the government didn’t have any form of admin access when I used a nonstandard copying program on the base computer; they knew that instantly[ref]This is odd in a technical; or as a friend of mine might say, propeller-head kind of way. After all if they didn’t have admin access; how were they instantly noticing what kind of software I was using to copy the files for them?[/ref] Second, the friend of my chain of friends asked me if I knew how to use some particular piece of software on the base computer. I told him no and he replied if [REDACTED][ref]The name of one of the directors I work with at my real-life, day job.[/ref] knew that; she’d laugh and laugh about it.

Then I woke up.

I can’t imagine myself as a runner. I’ve never been good at it nor have I ever developed any desire to be good at it.

Instead, I like to bike. In part, it’s because when you get up a good head of speed and have a flat bit of road in front of you; you can just coast along and enjoy the ride. It’s also because there are some many gadgets and dohickeys that you can get for a bike that really appeals to the tech in me.

In any case, as the weather has been awful and I don’t get enough exercise elsewhere; I’ve been using our exercise bike at home. It’s a fancy model with all kinds of electronic whatchamacallits built in. I try to do 15-20 minutes every day[ref]Well…. I do take weekends off.[/ref] and on a good day I’ll get the bike to tell me I’ve gone nearly seven miles[ref]Once or twice, I actually got it to claim I’d gone over 7 miles![/ref]. Yesterday the weather was particularly fine and I had no pressing demands on my time. So I got my real bike out and went for a ride. I got myself onto the Cedar Valley River trail and just headed out. Initially, it kind of sucked[ref]A portion of the trail nearest to me goes past a local dump, nicknamed Mt. Trashmore and that portion of the trail reeks.[/ref] but I pushed past it and before long was really enjoying myself.

I’ve been on this trail before, but never gone all that far along it as I’ve had other commitments to draw me away. As my schedule was open, I just kept going and was soon past the areas I was familiar with. I was starting to feel a bit winded, but the day was particularly fine and the trail was lovely[ref]It also helped that I’d gotten past the Mt. Trashmore section and it didn’t reek any more.[/ref]; so I kept going and going. Though now I was drinking more from my water bottle and stopping to rest more frequently. Additionally all the tiny little hills on the trail were starting to feel like mountains and that’s when I realized I’d been out on my bike for over an hour and I wasn’t going to have enough ommph to be able to get back home. I called up my wife[ref]Hiya Sweetie![/ref] to see if she was back from her appointment and could come get me. As I’m actually writing this from home; you can safely imagine she was available. 🙂

After we were home (and I was rested[ref]By rested, I mean no longer gasping for air[/ref]), I mapped out where I’d biked and found I’d only gone about seven and a quarter miles over the course of an hour. A far cry from how well I thought I’d been doing on our exercise bike. So I guess what I’m saying is while I’m no runner; I can definitely relate to how sucking sucks. 😉

This post was inspired by Sucking Sucks, A Runners Tale.

Just realized that I hadn’t followed up the car drama post with any updates here; though I have been talking to some of you in person about things.

So, the accident. Michelle was driving to work when she reached the intersection of 4th Ave SE & 10th St. She had a green light; so she was continuing through intersection when another driver pulled out right in front of her. Michelle had no change to stop and crashed into the side of the other vehicle. Michelle’s airbag deployed and she was badly shaken up. ES took her to the ER where they have her some pain killers[ref]Though she said they weren’t good enough[/ref] and ran a battery of tests[ref]Blood work, x-rays, CT scans, etc…[/ref]. First and most important, Michelle is fine. All the tests came back good; heck the doc even commented on how strong her bones were. 🙂

We’ve been in talks with our insurance company since the accident trying to get everything sorted out. As the accident happened so close to our purchase of the vehicle; not all of the paperwork had gone out everywhere; which caused some confusion[ref]For example, the towing company had a hard time figuring out which ruined vehicle was ours. :([/ref]. Another problem we’ve had is people, who initially stopped to make sure Michelle was ok, didn’t stick around once ES arrived and they didn’t leave any contact information. This means there aren’t any witnesses to the accident and as there aren’t any traffic cameras on that intersection; it’s Michelle’s word vs. the other driver’s. As you might expect, the other driver is claiming they had the green light.

In any case, our insurance company has declared the Tucson a total loss. Thanks to some advice from a good friend[ref]Hi Kim![/ref], we asked for (and received) an itemized breakdown of how the insurance company was calculating the value of our Tucson. After looking it over we found it didn’t include all of the feature on the Tucson; fortunately when we bought the vehicle, it came with the original dealer’s sticker. I scanned a copy of that and emailed the documentation over. Today our claim handler called me back to say based on the documentation we provided them that they were increasing the valuation by about $650.

For a car this expensive, that’s not much but it should be enough that we won’t owe anything on the auto-loan (once all the paperwork clears) and we might even have a little bit for a down payment on a replacement vehicle. Unfortunately, our insurance company won’t pay anything to help offset the warranty we purchased with the Tucson; but they suggested talking to the dealership to see if they’ll return some of those funds on a pro-rated basis[ref]We also plan to try working with the dealership; so if that doesn’t work out, maybe they’ll be able to transfer the warranty to whatever replacement vehicle we end up with.[/ref].

Though there’s still the open question of how the insurance company[ref]The other driver was insured by the same company as we are, which may streamline some of the paperwork but I wonder if the end result will be good or bad for us.[/ref] will assign/handle the liability for the accident. Given that to the best of our knowledge, no witnesses have come forward and there’s no camera footage; that’s still a bit troubling.

For some extra …. fun, Michelle had been having a bad cough since the accident. On Friday she was having some trouble breathing; so we made another trip the ER. Interesting medical fact: Car accidents can make you more prone to infections, including lung infections; also pneumonia is a very opportunistic infection.

Yup, Michelle managed to catch pneumonia. They gave her some more drugs and she’s doing much, much better now[ref]The cough is almost entirely gone and the bruises from the car accident have also begun to fade.[/ref]. Still on the bright side, we’ve got excellent friends who’ve all been exceedingly kind and helped us out in all kinds of ways since the accident. So many, many thanks to all you[ref]And I’ll try to keep the car drama posts better updated from here on out.[/ref]!

As mentioned here previously, we recently bought a new (new to us anyway) car. Shortly after publishing that post, I was contacted by one of the PR reps[ref]Hi Stephanie![/ref] at Edmunds.com. It seems they ran across my post, found it interesting and offered to send me some freebies[ref]I promise this will become relevant to this post later.[/ref]

Then we took the Tucson back to the dealership so they could install the value guard package[ref]Basically, it’s a fancy plastic wrapper that replaces the old leather car bras and is designed to prevent rocks and what not from chipping the paint.[/ref] we let ourselves be talked into. It took them 4 days to get it all setup and while they were working on our Tucson, they lent us an Elantra. I’m sure that’s a nice car… for somebody smaller. My wife complained that she barely fit in it; as I’m taller than she is, I never tried the car out.

When we finally got our Tucson back, my wife noticed a big scratch on the tail gate. She called the dealership back to complain and then called me at work. When I got home, I examined the car and then called the dealership. I explained my frustrations. The service manager I spoke to was very polite but explained there wasn’t a lot he could do other than to fix the damage. He did say he’d talk to their general manager to see what else could be done.

At our next opportunity, we drove the Tucson down to the dealership to drop it off to have the tail gate fixed. This time they gave us another, slightly newer Tucson off their lot as a the loaner. It was nice and had some features ours didn’t but was also missing some things that ours had. Our Tucson had a better electronics package, including a backup camera. The loaner had heated seats, side-mirror turn signals and those window guard things that let you leave your window cracked without worrying about it raining. On the whole, we greatly preferred our Tucson to their loaner, though I’ll admit to wishing we had the heated seats.

That’s all the older car drama, now onto today’s nightmare.

I was sleeping pretty heavily, though I’m pretty sure I’d gotten up enough to hit the snooze button one time. Then my phone started ringing, as I’m blind without my glasses; I fumbled with it for a minute. I figured out it was my wife calling just in time for her to disconnect. I called her back immediately and found out she’d been in a car accident. I threw on some clothes and rushed down to the hospital. Only the quickest route to the hospital took me right past the accident site and I saw the front end of our Tucson looked destroyed. I spoke to one of the police officers on the scene and was told they’d just loaded my wife into the ambulance and were taking her over to the hospital.

I spent the next three hours or so sitting around the ER waiting for the doctors to finish taking the X-rays and completing their exams. Fortunately, everything checked out fine; they just warned us Michelle would likely be very sore the next couple of days. Also at one point, one of the police officers came by to give us a copy of the accident report and to tell us where they’d had our Tucson towed.

After I took Michelle home, I then had the joy of seeing how the insurance side of the automobile industry works. I spent most of the rest of the day on the phone, calling our insurance, the towing company, repair shops, etc… *sigh*

Oh and those freebies that Edmunds.com said they were sending; they came in today’s mail. *double sigh* It’s been one hell of day.