One Damn Thing After Another.

So, because was a good girl and I decided to get off my big fat butt and get some stuff accomplished today instead of sitting around surfing the internet, I took my car into the car wash. Then I vacuumed it with the car wash's crappy vacuum that didn't get any of the damned dirt and debris off. (And, believe me, after a road trip to White Sands with three adults and a toddler, your car accumulates some serious debris.) Then I put air in the tires. Only I couldn't reach the right front tire. So I backed up a little. With the passenger side door open. Into a post.

Result: inside of the door is dented. Door will not shut, will not latch, will not lock. I drove it by my mechanic, who was located half a block away, and he got out his leatherman and fiddled with the mechanism a bit, but quickly determined that the problem was that the dent was making the mechanism not connect, and that, while they could probably get it to shut with a fair amount of work, what I really needed was a body shop. So I came home and called the insurance company. Again.

There are a couple of annoying points about this. Point 1: This is, of course, an entirely separate incident from the hail damage. Which means two deductibles. Which means $500. Eep. I'm seriously thinking of just cancelling the claim on the hail dings and living with them. They're really not that bad, and given that I'm pretty much planning on driving the car until it dies and trading it it, they might not be worth worrying about. But we'll see what the adjustor says. Point 2: Car door not shutting means car not drivable, which is a difficulty, given that a) the body shop I usually use (and which my insurance company guarantees) is 60 miles away, and b) the body shops here in town are backed up for weeks fixing damage from the hail.

There are a couple of good points... Given that hail damage and accidents are being handled by two entirely different groups, I'm not going to have to wait for two weeks for somebody to come out and look at this problem. And, fortunately, my foot, while it's still giving me a little trouble, has mostly been behaving itself, even after all the walking I did last week, so if I have to walk into work for a while it should be OK.

Stupid car. Stupid post. Stupid laws of physics. Stupid me.