Monday, December 19, 2005

The glories of 8 a.m. and rental cars

Up early again, to take my car to the body shop. She's finally getting fixed! No better way to start the day than with some online humor courtesy of my favorite columnist, James Lileks. (Sorry, Dave Barry--you take a sabbatical, you get replaced.) His 12 Catastrophes of Christmas are high-frickin-larious! Maybe someday I'll be able to write half as well as he. From today's Bleat:
It is stupid cold outside. Five when I got up, Five at noon, Five at sunset. I think it’s Two now. Yesterday I drove to Target...and there was no place to park except the outer realms of the lot; the wind was blowing me-by-north-me, and seemed intent on keeping me from the warm red womb of Mother Target. I pressed on. Once inside I...got a cart for shopping. They’d just brought in a herd from the pens outside, and the handles of the cart were too cold to touch. I used my coat sleeves. I looked around and saw everyone else in the area pushing carts with coat sleeves. One of those things you just accept, I guess; I suppose in Arizona the cart handles burn your flesh off. It’s all a trade-off.


Later. I was late to the body shop. There was a ton of ice on my car, and it was not joking this time.

So I couldn't use the squeegee backwards, like I'd done before. I had to come back upstairs and get a spatula. Pathetic. I seriously need an ice scraper. When I finally got to the body shop, the lady from Enterprise was waiting to pick me up. She was driving a Dodge Magnum, one of those fierce looking not-quite-a-station-wagon-not-quite-a-minivan-not-quite-an-SUV cars. Huge inside. Power everything. She said it was the car I would be getting. I thought to myself, "Geez, this is only $25.99 a day?!" Turns out she was mistaken, of course. I got a Kia Rio.


Tiny, tiny, tiny, but at least it's not a Geo Metro! At least it has a CD player. Besides, it will be easier to park and will get better mileage than the Magnum. Luckily my insurance pays for a rental while my car is being repaired, but I'm paying for the additional insurance. I could never bring myself to call Allstate and tell them that I'd managed to wreck the rental I was driving while my regular car was being repaired from the last wreck. I love irony, but not that much.

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