Ever have one of those days you whished you hadn’t gotten out of bed?
\nWell, Monday was a day like that for me… I got up late and was on my way
\ninto work. The roads were pretty typical and didn’t seem to be too
\nslippery, especially the freeway M-47. I was going along fine, until I
\ncame to the exit ramp onto US-10 West. Before I knew it, I had hit a patch
\nof black ice and was quickly making my way towards the guardrail. I was on
\nthe brakes as soon as I started sliding, but that did little to prevent me
\nfrom bashing the passenger side of my front-end into the guardrail.
\nLuckily my airbags didn’t go off, and my car didn’t stall out. I put it
\ninto reverse, pulled myself onto the side of the road and waited for a
\nblack hummer to pass… yes he saw the whole thing, and no… he didn’t
\nstop. I got out of my car, looked at the damage, checking if the tire
\nstill had air and whether there was any fluid leaking… there wasn’t… I
\nhopped back in, fired it up and off to work I went. On the way, I tried
\ngetting a hold of Susan, but she’s been having a hectic week lately and
\ncouldn’t make it to the phone. A couple hours later I get a call from her
\nand told her what happened. She said I should probably call the police and
\nlet them know I was in an accident (even though I didn’t get hurt, and was
\nthe only one involved)… reluctantly I called and that was a lot of
\nfun…
\nSince I was at work, in Midland, I decided I would call the local Law
\nEnforcement Center:
\n“Midland Law Enforcement, how can I help you?”
\n“Hi, I’d like to report an accident that happened this morning.”
\n“All reports must be filed using 911.”
\n“Ok, thanks.”
\n“Your welcome, bye.”
\nOkay, so I had to dial 911…
\n“Midland County 911, what’s your emergency?”
\n“Hi, I’d like to report an accident that happened this morning.”
\n“Where did it happen at?”
\n“The exit ramp off M-47 onto US-10.”
\n“I think that’s Saginaw County, I’ll transfer you to their 911 service.”
\n“Okay…”
\n“Saginaw County 911, what’s your emergency?”
\n“Hi, I’d like to report an accident that happened this morning.”
\n“Where did it happen at?”
\n“The exit ramp off M-47 onto US-10.”
\n“I think that’s Midland County, hold on let me check…”
\n5 minutes later, “That’s not Saginaw County, let me transfer you to
\nMidland County.”
\n“I already called there, they transferred me to you.”
\n“Hmm…let me check again…”
\n10 minutes later, “Oh, you’re right, that’s Bay County let me transfer
\nyou to their 911 service.”
\n“Kay…”
\n“Bay County 911, what’s your emergency?”
\n“Hi, I’d like to report an accident this morning”
\n“Where did it happen at?”
\n“The exit ramp of M-47 onto US-10.”
\n“Where are you at now?”
\n“At work, the Dow Chemical Co.”
\n“In Midland?”
\n“Yeah.”
\n“What time did the accident occur?”
\n“Around 8:00 AM.”
\n“Why didn’t you report the accident at the time it ocurred?”
\n“I didn’t realize I had to, I wasn’t hurt and it didn’t involve anyone
\nelse…”
\n“Okay… how far from Bay County are you?”
\n“About 5 or 10 miles.”
\n“Well, I can’t send a Bay County trooper that far to take your report.”
\n“Can I set up a time to meet with a trooper in Bay County?”
\n“I can’t really set up an appointment, because after I hang up with you
\nI might get another call in…”
\n“I understand that, but what should I do?”
\n“Let me check something, hold on I’ll be right back…”
\n“Okay…”
\n10 minutes later, “It looks like Midland County has a trooper on duty
\ntoday, I’ll transfer you to their central dispatch…”
\n“Sure… thanks”
\n“Central dispatch, how can I help you?”
\nOkay, so I finally was able to get a hold of someone in Midland County
\nthat could get a hold of a Bay County trooper to take my report… even if
\nI went through three 911 numbers to end up at the spot I started with…
\nCentral Dispatch is in the Law Enforcement Center… pretty effective, I
\nknow! After I met up with the trooper and gave my report, I learned that a
\nguardrail is considered another party… and if I damaged it, I would get
\na citation… the trooper said he’d take a look and let me know later that
\nday… After meeting with the trooper I went over to the Credit Union to
\ntalk with a Liberty Mutual representative, and was told how to file a
\nclaim.<\/p>\n
The rest of the work day was pretty boring, I left a little early
\nbecause I wanted to get a couple estimates on my car… my first stop was
\nGarber (dealership). The guy took pictures of my car and wrote it up as an
\ninsurance claim (although I hadn’t called Liberty Mutual yet…) He gave
\nme a figure and said all I needed to do was call back and schedule an
\nappointment… I stopped in somewhere to ask where a body shop was, and
\nthey said Daniels’ on Wackerly was pretty good, so I set off in that
\ndirection. Not having an address I stopped in another place on Wackerly to
\nsee if they knew where it was. The guy told me it was right after a street
\ncalled Dublin on the right, there was a bright red sign I couldn’t miss.
\nOn my way out there I passed by a body shop, that had appeared to be
\nDaniels, but the sign was blue and I couldn’t be sure. I made my way up to
\nDublin, but didn’t see any red sign, nor Daniels’… I thought, that must
\nhave been the body shop, the two people were talking about and turned
\naround. When I got closer to the blue sign, I saw it was actually
\nDuane’s… It didn’t look like a great place, but there was an open sign
\nand I thought, what the heck… I pulled in and entered the door to find
\nthe place wasn’t much more then a big two-story, two-car garage. Upon
\nentering I looked down to my right to notice a box full of empty beer
\ncans… hmmm… that’s interesting. So I asked the guy for a quote, he
\ngrabbed piece of paper and we went out to my car. After getting the info,
\nwe went back inside and he started working on the quote. While I was
\nwaiting, one of the mechanics took the tab off a beer can and threw it in
\nthe box of empties, hmm…that’s a little odd! Anyway, I got the quote
\n(and it was the cheapest), but I was quite skeptical of the establishment,
\nthanked the guy and left. I thought to myself, ok, that wasn’t Daniels’,
\nwhere is this place? I decided to go up past Dublin and found that
\nDaniels’ was quite a ways past it, but they were closed, shucks…
\nOn my way home, I decided I’d go to one more place, the dealership in
\nFreeland, McArdle. The guy was friendly and quickly got a quote wrote up
\nand said he might be able to finish it in a day (whereas Garber would take
\nabout three). I thanked him and left… Garber was the most expensive, but
\nthey deal a lot with Liberty Mutual, and the cost to repair outweighed the
\ncost of the deduction and increase to our premium, so we decided to take
\nit there.<\/p>\n
I had stopped at McDonald’s for a quick bite, I knew I was going to be
\nhome late, and as I pulled up to the second window, my phone started to
\nbuzz… I answered it, it was Matt, he wanted to play some racquetball
\nlater. We agreed on a time and I was pretty excited, because the day
\nhadn’t been going very well. After eating, I got my gear on and headed off
\nto the MCC, being extra careful not to hit any guardrails. I picked up
\nMatt and we were on the courts pretty quickly. After the first game, I
\nnoticed I was bleeding, sure enough I had a bloodnose. I headed off to the
\nbathroom to try and get it to stop bleeding. I couldn’t really breath for
\nthe rest of our games and I was feeling pretty nauseous from the
\nMcDonald’s I had ate not too long ago… I was still trying pretty hard
\nand our first few games were really close. Then, during the third or
\nfourth, after my server, Matt delivered a powerful forehand directly to
\nthe side of my head. My ear started ringing, and it defintely stung for
\nawhile, but I still kept playing… After we finished seven games I had
\nmore then I could take (though I didn’t lose a single one). Coming home
\nafter that, I was sick and had a killer headache, and to top it off, my
\ncar was pretty banged up… one of those days, you wished you hadn’t
\ngotten out of bed…<\/p>\n
Luckily the next day was much better, no accidents, my headache
\nsubsided, though my ear would still be sore for a couple more days. Worked
\ndragged on and I managed to make it through a couple boring days.
\nWednesday night, I was ready to hit the courts again, I wanted to get some
\npractice in before my next match (scheduled for Sunday at 3 PM). I did my
\ntypical warm-up of six laps (1\/2 mile) on the track and made my way to the
\ncourts. I was just about to start my practice, when someone I didn’t know
\ncame up to me asking if I was looking for a pick up game. I told him I was
\nif he was… we introduced each other and man did we play some really fun
\ngames. Apparently he comes with a couple other guys every Monday or
\nWednesday and asked if I’d look to join them, I said sure, that’d be great
\n(things were looking up!) I did managed to beat him the first two games,
\nafter a stunning come back down eight points in the first game… he won
\nthe next three and we were kicked out before we could finish the last
\ngame. It was still a lot of fun…<\/p>\n
I somehow managed to get up really early for work and as per usual I
\nchecked my email before leaving the house. My job scout, found two jops
\nthat matched my skillset, I briefly looked at them, and thought I’ll apply
\nfor these while I’m at work… Sure enough soon as I get to work and get
\nsettled, I start the application process for each job. It was about two
\nhours later when I received a call from a 616 number (Grand Rapids I
\nthought…) Being a screener I let it ring, and thought, wait that one
\ncompany I applied for had an office in Grand Rapids. About two minutes
\nlater I get another call from a 616 number (a different one). I thought,
\nokay I’ll answer this one, sure enough it was the company I had just
\napplied for, sweet! After talking a little with the guy, I found out I
\ndon’t have enough “professional” experience to do the job… a Network
\nSecurity Analyst… I have a lot of experience working with networks at
\nhome, but that wasn’t good enough for him, so I didn’t qualify for this
\njob. He said he’d hold onto my resume if something came up, but still it
\nwas cool that I threw my resume into the dark abyss, only to get a
\ncallback a couple hours later!<\/p>\n
Winter is upon us, we did manage to make it out to City Forest last
\nweekend to break our ski’s in. It was pretty fun the trails were nice,
\nexcept for the people walking on the cross-country ski groomed part…
\nwith snowshoes… Currently, we are supposedly getting 5-8 inches of snow
\nby 10 o’clock tonight, so maybe we’ll go out again this weekend, after
\nshoveling… My job’s really boring, I don’t have a lot to do, but to take
\noff for vacation next week to go up for Winter Carnival, I have to get a
\nbunch of stuff done for a project I’m working on… It would be doable,
\nbut I don’t have any information for the stuff I need to get done, wow
\nthat’s helpful… if it comes down to it, I might call in sick, saying I
\ncaught whatever my office-mate had… shh, don’t tell anyone! Oh, I did
\ncall into Liberty Mutual, and that was easy enough, though they didn’t ask
\nfor our policy or the police report\/incident number, which was kind of
\nstrange… and I have an appointment to take my car in after Winter
\nCarni– err, when I’m feeling better, ;). Hopefully I’ll get some pictures
\nof the damage up soon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ever have one of those days you whished you hadn’t gotten out of bed? Well, Monday was a day like that for me… I got up late and was on my way into work. The roads were pretty typical and didn’t seem to be too slippery, especially the freeway M-47. I was going along fine, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnjeske.ddns.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}