A terrible, terrible week, #5: the cars

[womzilla]

supergee had a small accident in Templeton, our Mercury Sable, a few weeks ago, leaving the car with a serious dent in the driver-side door that was extremely unsightly and made the door slightly harder to open and close. Because we have excellent auto insurance (through USAA, a small but wonderful part of my patrimony), we opted to get it fixed.

Body work takes a while, for cars as for people, so Templeton has been in the shop for nearly a week and might be in for a few days more. Because we knew we would need to be bi-vehicular on Friday night and this afternoon so that I could go out to Long Island for gaming, we availed ourselves of a rental car, also courtesy of USAA. However, for complex reasons of paperwork, only supergee and nellorat are registered to drive it; I can drive Edmund, our Subaru wagon. (I usually do, anyway.)

This morning, supergee woke us with the news that Edmund was sitting in the parking lot at Stop N Shop with two flat front tires because of an encounter with a mammoth pothole. (I believe the pothole was actually caused by a mammoth.)

So I got to sit in Edmund in the Stop N Shop parking lot for two and a half hours waiting for AAA to send a tow truck. Normally AAA service takes around an hour, but the local tow company needed to send a flatbed because of the all-wheel drive on the Subaru, and the company has only one functioning flatbed truck because the other one is--wait for it--in the shop. So there was a huge backlog.

Now I'm home waiting for a call from the tire shop to tell me that the car is ready. Needless to say, I'm not going to get to go gaming today.