Ten-Finger Exercises

Bumper pain

Yesterday was the day when, finally, the body shop would be ready to fix my telephone pole hugging bumper. That's been over three weeks, hasn't it? Would have been nice to have them do that while I was in Albuquerque, but no. So, yesterday I arrived nice and early, left the car and the keys, got a rental car and got to work on time. When I got home, there was a message on my answering machine from 9:05 asking me to call the body shop.

It seems they ordered the wrong bumper. The one they got is textured, and mine isn't. Oh. And it will take until Thursday or Friday at the earliest to get another. Oh. And I have to come get my car because it's driveable, and the insurance company won't chip in for a rental under those circumstances.

So, I had a cute red Mazda hatchback to drive yesterday. I could have driven it all day today too, because I had to pay for two days anyway. But I had to drive 100 miles today, and that meant filling the gas tank up; and to take advantage of 25c lower prices per gallon, drive to Oregon to fill up. Too much trouble. I took the car back when I had time, and drove my dirty Escape. I didn't have time to get it washed, and hadn't when it was missing its taillight.

I went to a local writers' group today for the first time, and it was pretty fun. They made some very good suggestions about my story. I knew one of the ladies from somewhere else and hadn't particularly liked her before, but I found her writing funny and charming. So that was a plus. Two others read theirs, and they needed more help. I had to leave for an appointment, having misjudged how late the group would last, and wasn't too sorry to miss out on critiquing the last one.

The group is one of two bunches of Christian writers in town who meet, one or the other, weekly. I shied away from that designation, not wanting to be listening to a lot of 'God-talk', but found it not to be as dominant as I had feared. This is the more fundamental group of the two, supposedly, but it meets at 3 and the other at 1:30. I seldom have appointments after 3, so it works better.

Today, however, I had to go to Starbuck, my favorite trip, to visit the family. The patient died yesterday. I'll miss the people and the drive out there.