Pluses and minuses

The major, biggest plus, is that I am ok and airbags did not deploy.

A minus, as you have by now deduced, is that I was in an accident. Going home from work early to try to avoid bad driving conditions. Yeah.

A plus, again, is that the car was drivable, and got home on its own power.

A minus is that this is JD's car. My car would've totally stopped. This one skidded. Straight under the tail end of a landscape/plow truck. That for some reason wasn't moving after stopping at a completely empty rotary. I was a good distance back, started applying brakes in plenty of time, but skidded.

A plus, definitely, is that I had the presence of mind to use the training I got once in a course on driving to save your life (half a day, free as a bonus for getting my car that particular month, totally one of the best spent half days ever) to turn the car enough that the part stuck under the tail end of that truck was the passenger side, almost the very edge of it. Hence, no airbag deployment. Yeah, I am happy about it, particularly since I am short and sit very close to the wheel.

A minus is that I didn't think to honk while I was turning. If I did, maybe he would've moved just enough to avoid the collision. As is, there was a small island in the middle of the road, so I couldn't turn enough to avoid him completely.

No idea on whether this is a plus or a minus. The reason I had JD's car at all is that he took my very safe Volvo to go skiing with Monkey on her school vacation. They left Wednesday, won't be back until Sunday. I didn't tell him because there is nothing he can do from there, and all it would do is leave him worried about it when he should be enjoying what probably is the last ski trip of the season and his extremely technically competent skiing daughter.

I called in the insurance claim. Unfortunately, I can't see an adjuster until Tuesday, and who knows how long the repairs will be after that. It seems the damage is only on the body, so the day they can get the parts in should be the day we get the car back. I also called a friend who is a car wizard hoping he could come out and help me decide whether the car needed to be covered up or what. But he had knee surgery this week and is, therefor, immobile. Not to worry, I am ingenious-- took some pictures of the damage and some pictures of how I covered it up and sent to him for inspection. Got back a gold star and a suggestion to come out and brush all the snow off the front when it stops snowing just to make sure that melting snow doesn't seep in where it shouldn't go. So I stayed up clearing out my reader and waiting for the snow to stop. Went out at 1:30am and cleared it all off. With a house broom. It was kinda fun, but it looks like we got at least a foot of snow today, so there may be some not fun times in our future on clearing off the driveway into the garage. And no, I couldn't just put the damaged car into the garage today-- the driveway slopes down, making parking that car in the garage nontrivial, even under the best weather conditions. When there is snow, the car is always always parked outside.

Ok, off to bed now. I am sleeping in in the morning. It's not like I could go anywhere even if I really wanted to this weekend. My car and its lovely occupants don't come back until Sunday night.