I didn't do it, and the bear is okay.

So this is how our week (June 3 - 9) was.


1) I was sick all weekend, really sick. I missed work Friday and Monday, thereby using up all the sick leave I'm allowed for the year. (We can bank days, but I used them all up anyway.) Bronchitis, sinus infection, fluid behind the eardrums.

2) Tom went to Richmond for the press conference announcing a reward for information leading to etc. in his brother's murder case. They got a lot of tv coverage, even in our area, and are hopeful that it's enough money to make someone think about turning in his "buddy".

3) I took Zippy outside that afternoon off-leash. He does very well when he's with Tom, but he tends to ignore me. I walked around and looked at flowers and he disappeared. About 15 minutes later he came tearing back. I didn't even notice that he'd rolled in something, but it must have been pretty good, because he was coated with some incredibly stinky goo.

4) Tom came in. I still hadn't noticed Zip's new hairdo (nice and spiky) and immediately noted the fragrance. Evidentally it was pretty rank. I stuck the dog in the tub (still running a 100+ fever, feeling really rotten) and it took about 10 minutes to get all the "stuff" off him. The water ran brown the entire time. I scrubbed him as best I could, still not smelling a thing, so I guess it was good that I'm the one who washed him.

5) Tom can still smell the stink. I'm just starting to be able to get a tiny notion of what it was, but his nose is working. Seems that Zippy had rolled on the carpet after his roll outside, so the stink is permanently with us. Febreze has not touched it. UPDATE: Tom gave Zippy a bath this past weekend and reports that Zip is much more pleasant to be around now.

6) I have cell phone service with NTELOS, which is evidentally a Virginia-pretty-much-only company. They don't put much value on customer service. I've been with them for at least six years. I've been fighting them since I changed my plan at the end of March; they never credited me with that month's payment, instead they charged me for the plan I'd had for four years and changed on March 26 to a less-expensive plan. Half the price. I paid the bill in full when I bought my new phone that day.

For the past two months, I've received bills that still didn't reflect the change in rate. I went into the store, disputed the incorrect amount, and waited a week or two. My next bill still didn't show any change, so I called "customer service". The guy there was very helpful and agreed that I didn't owe the extra amount and put in another dispute. The first one was never recorded on my account, so nothing had happened. He said that after March 26, someone had gone into my account and changed it back to the higher plan; he had no explanation for that. He said to wait a couple of weeks and things should be fine. I paid the $50 that I owed and disputed the rest.

Got the bill for this month. It showed a past-due balance of $40. So back to the NTELOS store and another "customer service" rep. They never have the same people in there twice. I don't know if there's a big turnover or just schedules are different, but there's always someone new. I brought my contract, the last bill, and my impressions of it. After an hour of waiting while the cs rep went over my last three months' bills with some guy, I don't know if he was the manager or what, but he never spoke to me. They agreed that I owed the money, that they'd refunded it.

It just didn't sound right to me. I'm really really bad with numbers, but I knew those bills were wrong and they owed me $40 and an apology. However, that didn't happen. We left and I mentioned to Tom that I pay for this service in advance, not after the fact, and somewhere in those bills it should show where that money was refunded. Okay, now he realized what was going on; he thought that it was like a regular phone bill, paid for what I'd used in the last month. So we turned around, he went back in and spent half an hour going over the bills with Mr. Whoeverhewas, and pointed out the mistake. Slowly and painfully. He came out with the printout with Mr. W's signature that the money had been taken off my bill. It took over 2.5 hours to get that straightened out.

Whew. All that for $40. But it gets better.

7) So we were late going home. It was a beautiful evening, first really clear day in ages. We live on the far side of civilization and take a two-lane road 30 miles across the mountain into West Virginia. A few miles from the mountain we rounded a curve and lo and behold, there was a big old black bear running down the center of our lane right toward us. You don't fight a bear with a car and come out in good shape, and we didn't want to hit it, so Tom stood on the brakes. Thank God for ABS. We stopped in time to leave the bear in good health, he scampered on up the cliff by the road, and WHAM. A pickup truck crashed into the back of the car. To his credit, he skidded trying to avoid us, but it pretty much did in the left back end of our car, which we'd just gotten (used) in August to replace the Camry that died in a driveway while we were in Europe.

I jumped out of the car with my camera and started documenting the drama. I've always got my camera with me, and this is twice I've used this one to document an accident.






We waited for the state police to make his way that far off the interstate (fortunately, no one was badly hurt; we both have sore necks; I was twisted around in my seat watching the bear), he interviewed both Tom and the poor boy driving the truck, exchanged insurance info and off we went. The car is driveable, but the alignment is definitely a leetle bit off.

So, who knows. It's a 1999 Camry (and I can't say enough good things about Camrys; this is the third I've had and has over 154,000 miles on it; the last two were comparable), only cost $6000 last August and is possibly totalled. It'll cost thousands to repair, so it might be totalled.

*Sigh* I hate car-shopping.

UPDATE: The car goes in on Wednesday to be appraised or whatever it is they do to wrecked cars. We went to the ER the day after the wreck just to check things out; no damage from the wreck (although Tom's trapezius was in spasm from the crash), but I have arthritis in my neck. Great. And I'm finally feeling much better after the bout with bronchitis, but poor Tom has the crud now.