What a weekend
Its been an odd couple of days..

On Saturday I went over to Phil's to play on his forge. Later that evening I left my car parked in front of his house and we went off to a party. I had a great time playing on the forge and at the party. At 5am Sunday morning (when we get back from the party), I find a note on the front of my car, then noticed that the driver door had been smashed. Apparently the guy who lives across the street was backing out of his driveway in a hurry and didn't notice my car.

The note was very apologetic, in his note and when I called him.

The car's still drivable (when its dry out), so I drove to work on Monday, then came home to quite a surprise. Power was out (which I had expected), but an oak in my neighbor's hard fell down. It fell from behind her house, diagonaly between our houses, across her drive way, and almost (but not quite) hitting my house. One or two things were knocked over in my house, I'm guessing it made a big thump when it fell. I feel bad for my neighbor. Her deck had a huge hole built into it that this tree was growing through. She doesn't really have a deck anymore. On the other hand, the tree missed both our houses, something I'm very thankful for. After seeing the tree down, I was in a rather estatic mood when I realized it hadn't damaged my house. It even made me forget about the car issues.

So, back to the car.. I originally tried to file through USAA (my insurance company) because they've given me such excellent service in the past. I was then going to have USAA get the money from GEICO (the other guy's insurnace company). I'd already gotten the estimate from the USAA-recommended body shop on Monday and had an appointment with them to take the car in next Tuesday. However, when I was talking to USAA today, they said that since I don't have rental car coverage on my USAA policy, I can't get a rental car covered if I file through them, even though GEICO would pay for it if I went directly through them. So I went and called GEICO (the guy who hit me already called GEICO and opened the claim). They were very nice, when I explained that my care now leaks when it rains, they offered me an appointment at a body shop for an estimate tomorrow morning at 10am. Even better, they said I can leave the car there and someone from the rental car company will pick me up there and GEICO will pay for the rental car until my car is fixed, and it'll be billed directly to GEICO. If USAA covers a rental car, its a reimbursement, not directly paying for it. I hate to say it, but I got a *much* helpful response from GEICO than I did from USAA. I'm probably going to write a letter to USAA asking wtf's up with this?

On top of getting that taken care of, my power finally came back on at 7:20pm tonight.