Today, the Mystery Machine got into it’s first accident. ‘Mystery Machine?’ you ask? My car – I have a lot of Scooby Doo stuff in there, and it’s big and green and I like to solve mysteries. Hence, the Mystery Machine.

But I digress.

I was driving into Thousand Oaks from Camarillo and the traffic was so-so. I slowed down with traffic, and stopped, because it got pretty bad. Then behind me, I heard a screeching. I looked at my rearview and saw a truck swerving. After living near a busy street, I knew such a screeching was usually followed by a crashing sound. This time, instead of a crashing sound, I heard a thump. Surprisingly, it was a thump that I felt, too. It all went in slow motion. Then I realized that I was hit. And I wasn’t even moving.

So I thought “Oh fuck!” and pulled over to the shoulder. I got out of the car to inspect the damage, and saw a palm sized abrasion on the side of my car. It was barely dented, and you could hardly tell that anything happened at all. But it was there. My baby was damaged.

The other driver had pulled over on the shoulder as well and came out of his truck to check on his car to see if there was damage. Then he walked over to me to make sure I was OK. We checked out my car, and he apologized often. I guess the car right in front of him broke really quickly, and he swerved to avoid it and hit me.

He gave me his address, driver’s license number and insurance information. He was really helpful and seemed genuinely sorry.

What sucks is that since I’m working with the president today, so I had set out early to get some extra work done, but since I had the accident, I didn’t have much time to do the things that I wanted to do.

But I’m ok, which is what really matters.

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In other news, I was working with the prez today, and he started saying, “Tomorrow we’re going to walk over this…” and I said, “Um, I’m not going to be here tomorrow. I’m on vacation.”

”WHAT?!?!?!” he said, as flames started coming out of his ears.

”Well, I gave in my two week vacation notice, and no one told me No, and no one told me Yes. But in the past, it’s always been a Yes if they don’t say anything.”

He was pretty upset, since that means he has to be there on his own tomorrow, and worked me really hard for the next few hours after that, but it’s what I expected. Fortunately, I was able to keep my cool and not make any stupid mistakes and I think I could actually have impressed him, which is pretty hard to do. But he was still pissed at me.

But I got done all I needed to do, which is what was my goal for the day.

And when he left at 4:45, one hour and 45 minutes before I did, he quickly said, “Good job.”

And I shook my foot like a dog being scratched behind the ears.

Posted by Yano at January 22, 2004 01:11 AM

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