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7-3-04 // 7.55 pm there'd only be weather on the news NP: Matt Good - "White Light Rock n Roll Review" So today I got in a car wreck. It was like 3 o'clock this afternoon and I was driving Illinois 158 in the nowhere between Columbia and Millstadt, headed to my aunt's house for a barbecue. As traffic tends to do on those two lane rural highways, there were like four or five cars all in a line, I was the last of them. At one point, the car two cars in front of me decided it wanted to do one of those last minute, come-to-a-complete-stop, no-turn-signal sort of turns. The car in front of me had to slam on its brakes, as did I. Sadly, I didn't have enough time and I hit the car in front of me. Of course, it was a big ol' Jeep SUV, so it just got its plastic rear fender cracked up. I wasn't going terribly fast, but my car must've hit that one at just the right angle, as the front right end of my car got pretty smashed up. I think the radiator was damaged, too. Anyway, the first words out of my mouth were "is everyone OK??" -- thankfully they were. I had to call the state troopers out since we were inbetween municipalities. He took his sweet time getting there, but once he did arrive he wasn't a jerk or anything. The skies turned black and we got a torrential rain in the middle of all this, so we had to hide in our cars till it passed. The rural mail carrier who was delivering mail to the shut-in old man whose house we were on the shoulder near ran her van into a ditch/mud pit so we (me, the state trooper and the guy in the car that I hit) had to help push her out of this mini-jungle. So anyway, the trooper ook my testimony or whatever you call it, got the other people's, got my info and theirs, etc. Wrote me a ticket since apparently in Illinois, regardless of ultimate fault, the person that does the hitting gets a ticket by default. So I called my insurance company and they sent out an affiliated tower who took the car back across the river to a body shop down on Kingshighway in the city who are also affiliated with the insurance company, so that's good at least. Don't know if they're open on Monday or not, so it might not be till Tuesday that I find out how long it'll take to repair or what they're going to do with it in general. According to the insurance company, I don't get a rental car (what?), but I do get a discount on renting one myself. The auto body shop might have a loaner car for me, which would be cool. My mom and dad came and picked me up and took me to the BBQ, which was nice. A plate of bratwurst and salad and a can of beer helped a little bit. My uncle John gracefully offered to lend me his seldom used Honda (he often works from home so he can watch my little cousin Sam) for a few days if I'm not able to get a loaner. My sister (who now lives in the city as well, don't know if I mentioned that before or not) gave me a ride home, which was very nice of her. As for the car, thankfully I have full coverage insurance, so all I'll end up having to pay on my car is the deductible, which while it isn't pocket change, isn't too bad considering what it could be if I wasn't fully covered. I'm sure my insurance will go up, but at this point I just keep saying "it could've been worse", and it's true. Still sucks, though. So yes. A bad, bad, bad afternoon. Bad. In other news... Found out yesterday that the Illinois Department of Revenue is trying to garnish my wages. This is in reference to the fact that they are in fact incompetent idiots. Flashback to last summer, I get a notice with a bill for a huge amount claiming I didn't pay my 2002 state taxes. Which I did. So I called them up and apparently they claimed to have never received a W-2 for that year, and if I sent one in I'd be fine. So after going through tons of bureaucratic crap to get a copy from my work's HR department, I faxed a copy of the 2002 W-2 in to the number they told me to. I never heard back from them, so I assumed case closed. Apparently I was wrong. Now they're trying to garnish my wages because they claim they "never got a W-2". Bullshit. So I talked to a guy on the phone Friday and explained my situation. He said to fax in yet another copy of the W-2 and they'd take care of it, call off the bogus garnishment, and refund any money they erroneously took from my paycheck. So I faxed the form Friday afternoon, hopefully it got to Customer Service Representative John B like it was supposed to. I'm going to call again on Monday or Tuesday just to double check. I suppose the lesson to take away from all of this is "stay away from Illinois". I mean, I'm from there and all, but I've had nothing but bad luck with it lately. Anyway, today I had a nice, relaxing morning with Erin, then she went to work. I went down to the Loop to get her surprise tickets to see Steve Burns (yeah, the "Blues Clues" host turned Flaming Lips collaborator) at Blueberry Hill next Sunday. Wandered around Vintage Vinyl for a while and ran into Andy and Liz, they invited us to a barbecue on Monday evening, cool. Dropped by Erin's work with the tickets, and was a jerk regarding a different matter. Hopefully she's forgiven me. Then it was off to the family barbecue, and we all know how that turned out... I'm hoping for smoother sailing from this point onwards.
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