Minimally Exceptional

The next day I called my guy at American Family to report the accident and find out what I need to do next. I tell him the whole story, including a very vivid description of how the other driver was clearly at fault, and he tells me not to worry about it – an adjuster will call me and walk me through what to do.

Great. Easy enough. An adjuster calls back and takes a statement from me about what happened and starts telling me about insurance policies and car repairs. She tells me that my deductible is $250 and that my policy doesn’t cover a rental car…

Wait, what? Why do I care what my deductible is or if a car is covered? So I told her the truth – “Let me be frank here. Here’s what I need to know. This accident was her fault. What do I need to do to get my car fixed and get a rental car without having to pay for any of it or have my rates go up?”

“Well you need to call her insurance company then.”

“Well why the fuck didn’t David tell me that before???”

“I don’t know, sir.”

So, now miffed at my insurance guy for leading me astray, I tried to track down her insurance office. Couldn’t find the guy. Forget it – let’s call her. I called her cell number to get contact information. I introduced myself properly and stated my purpose in calling: “Hi, my name is Brian Jenkins, you hit me yesterday. I’m calling to get the number to your claims office as I can’t find any information about it online.”

“Ugh, fine. I know who you are. I filed a claim yesterday and they said they’d be in touch with you Monday.”

“I see, good. I’d like to have the number just in case I need to follow up, though.”

“Fine. I’ll need to call you back with it.”

And then she hung up on me. She called me back with the number and then I started my ride on the insurance claim spiral of death. That’s the last I’ve heard from her, but I have had to deal with her insurance company up until the 16th, when I had to call them for hopefully the last time.

In the midst of all of this bullshitting, Laura and I were getting things ready and packing to go on the first of two mini-vacations. The first, August 3rd-6th, was to Virginia/Washington DC, where a friend of Laura’s was getting married. The wedding was in Virginia, but we had decided that we wanted to sightsee in DC, so we rented a car. As fate would have it, we were the only ones out of our group of people that went who decided to rent a car, so we did a bit of chauffeuring. Not really a big deal.

So we spent the weekend in Virginia for the wedding and related festivities, which were great. Everything started on Friday, when there was a pre-wedding cocktail hour for the out of town guests, so we got to socialize for a little bit with everyone before ‘the big day.’ The wedding itself was in a really nice, new, catholic church, which was nicer than any local church I can think of around here. The reception was probably the nicest (read: most expensive) I’ve ever been to, with a 5 course served meal consisting of all kinds of fancy stuff.

Sunday we all went into Washington DC – all of us being Laura, myself, Laura’s little sister, dad, and aunt – for a day of sightseeing. While I like all of the people involved in this adventure, it was seriously the most physically and mentally exhausting day I’ve had in a long time. We were out and about all day, and there was pretty consistent bickering, so by the end of the day I was totally wiped out. Laura dictated where we went – after all, it was OUR car, we were going to make sure we went to see what we wanted to. The first stop was a national park that I can’t remember the name of. The park is partially on a river, with one side of the river being Virginia, and the other being Maryland. There was a neat photo op at the park, as the view of the water and the horizon was great. Eventually those pictures will be up on my flickr account.

Next stop: the Washington Mall. We went to two of the Smithsonian buildings: the air and space museum, and the museum of natural history. The air and space museum was hosting the ‘national treasures’ exhibit while another museum was closed for renovations, so we also went through that and saw a bunch of neat stuff, including the R2D2 and C3PO costumes, the kermit the frog puppet, a mister rogers sweater, the seinfeld puffy shirt, and the signpost from the set of Mash. Next we went to the natural history museum, pretty much only to see the Hope Diamond. To get to the hope diamond, you had to go through their rock, gem, and mineral exhibit, which I thought was pretty great solely because I was a rock nerd as a kid. Again, neat pictures.

While driving to our next destination, my sister called me, wanting me to fix the cable. Her, Laura, and I had a ten minute fuss about it before Kelly hung up on me, right after I said “Kelly, I’m in Washington. I’m six states away. What do you want me to do about it?”

Anyway, the last stop for our evening of sightseeing was visiting the monuments at night. I don’t remember everything we did, but I know we went to the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the WWII memorial, the Vietnam memorial. Maybe others as well, but I just don’t remember. Again, Laura the budding photographer took some really great pictures. After that we returned to the hotel and packed it up for our flight home.

The flight home, much like the flight there, was pretty uneventful. The planes were absolutely the smallest planes I’ve ever been on – each row was two seats on one side of the aisle, and one seat on the other. There was no legroom at all and I had to hunch over to walk without hitting my head on the ceiling. My back, legs, and butt all hurt like hell at the end of the flight. No more american airlines ‘connection’ flights for me.

Virginia was neat, washington was neat, and everything about the wedding and surroudings was wonderful, but when you get right down to it, there’s no place like home.