An Unlikely Meeting (or Two, or Three)

Now on to the not-so-good things that have been going on lately. Grab a seat because it’s a long list...

It all started one evening about two weeks ago. Chris was making dinner, as usual, and I decided to have a few small pieces of sweet corn to tide me over. When I was doing research in Texas, Liz, Lauren, and I would go out to Jimma’s organic garden and pick sweet corn, chill it in the fridge, and eat it raw as a DELICIOUS snack. So that’s what I did. It was good, although not nearly as good as Jimma’s. I offered Chris a piece and he accepted. He took a bite and within seconds said his mouth and lips were itchy. Hmm. Then he said his throat felt funny and it felt weird to swallow. Uh-oh. He quickly took an antihistamine and called his mom, who’s a nurse, for advice. Of course, being a mom, she suggested he call the hospital and explain the situation. He called the hospital, and of course, being a hospital, they suggested he come in to get checked out. By this time it was 10:30pm. So off we went to the hospital. We sat there for several minutes while he filled out a patient form, and then one of the nurses came over to ask him some questions. She asked him what happened, and the first thing he said was, “My girlfriend tried to kill me.” Thanks! Then the nurse had to write down what had happened and how Chris was feeling, which seems simple enough, right? Apparently not. What should have taken three minutes took 20. She would ask Chris a question (like “How does your throat feel?”) and Chris would respond with something like “It feels like it’s burning.” Instead of just writing “Patient has burning feeling in throat” she sat there for several minutes with the pen hovering above the page deciding what to write. Geez, you don’t have to be all technical, just write what the patient says! By the end I just wanted to rip the clipboard from her hands and write it all myself! After about 20 minutes of this nonsense, she finally finished and called the on-call doctor, who said to give him some meds and send him home. He also said he wanted Chris to see an allergy specialist the next day. We drove home and were thankful that nothing more serious had happened. Who on Earth has a sweet corn allergy? Apparently Chris does.

The tales of woe don’t stop there. They just keep getting better. As I wrote in my previous blog post, last week I went to Byaduk Caves for several days. On my way home I stopped at the Woolworth’s grocery store in Naracoorte to pick up some stuff before heading home to celebrate Chris’s and my 6 month anniversary. As I was backing out of my parking spot to leave, I suddenly heard a loud “crunch” and felt a jolt to the back of the car. I pulled back into the spot and got out of the car, and a lady in another car got out and yelled, “Did you not see me?!” I hadn’t. I had looked both ways and behind me before pulling out, as usual. I have no idea where she came from and still cannot remember seeing her. We drove to the police station, where they told us if the damage is under $3000 they don’t need to get involved. We then drove to a car repair shop to get damage estimates. They estimated about $1500 damage to her car, with paint scratched off the side and a few minor pock-mark-like dents above the tire (although I really don’t see how I could have caused that part of the damage...). I didn’t have him estimate mine because it was only some paint scratched off the back, and there was already some paint missing when I bought the car (and it’s only worth $2000). Luckily I had bought additional third-party insurance (when you get a car here in Australia and register it, you automatically get insurance to pay for injury/death to another person), so my insurance would cover her damage. Of course she didn’t have the extra third-party insurance, so my damage wasn’t covered. Go figure. The lady was really nice though, and for some reason her parents met her at the repair shop (I think they were supposed to be meeting and then we had the accident). Her parents were a bit elderly, and we all chatted for about 15 minutes. Her dad tried to reassure me and said, “This happens to everyone” and “I’ve had a few hit myself over the years.” It did make me feel a bit better. When we parted ways, he invited me out to coffee with them. I politely declined and explained it was my 6 month anniversary with my boyfriend and I’d been gone for several days, so I probably should be getting back. Of course they understood. I’m glad we parted ways on good terms.

I was feeling okay until I got home and looked up my insurance policy to file a claim. Apparently I have to pay an “excess” whenever I make a claim and the accident is my fault. I have a basic excess of $400 and an “under 25 excess” of $500. So I had to fork out $900 just to call and make a claim! If the damage to her car had been under $900 I would have not bothered with insurance and just paid her myself. Unfortunately it was over $900, so I had no choice. Great. That pretty much ruined the relaxed evening of our anniversary.

The next evening we decided to order pizza. Because we are so far out of town they won’t deliver, so Chris took my car to get it. He left at 9:30pm and within 30 seconds texted me saying “Call me.” I didn’t respond because I didn’t want to text while he was driving. About a minute later I heard the car pull in and I knew something was wrong. He was back way too fast. He barged in the door, looking white and shaky, and said “I hit a kangaroo with your car.” My stomach sank, but after a few seconds it lifted and I felt very calm. We went out to look at the damage, and sure enough, he hit a kangaroo. The front of the car was smashed in. The hood was bent up, the metal bar running along the front of the car was bent, the grill was gone, the headlight was broken and the turn signal light was hanging out by its wires, the condenser was bent, and the radiator had a hole in it (we found all this out the next day when we took it to a mechanic, who said getting new parts for it all would cost more than the car is worth). So that ruined our second attempt at celebrating our anniversary. Luckily Chris’s sister’s boyfriend, Steve, is a mechanic, so Chris took about 30 pictures of the damage to send to Steve, and of course none of them were useful. Steve and Claire came out the next weekend to look at the car. Steve said he has access to cheap parts and will fix it for free, so now we just have to find time for that. Chris went back to Adelaide with them and brought his car back the next day (after putting a new battery in it, as it had been sitting unused in Adelaide for about six months). At least we’ve had a car this week to get us around, and we have something to get us to Melbourne next week (I’m going to the Australasian Bat Society Conference and Chris has to attend a few classes for uni). I think everything will work out in the end, which is I guess why I remained so calm about my car the whole time. Either that or I’m just in denial...

 

Chris with the kangaroo that gave us such a wonderful anniversary present. (I was going to get a picture of it on the road where it was after Chris hit it (just in case the insurance company/police needed pictures) but Chris moved it off the road before I got a chance. Yes, it was dead.)

My poor, poor car.

Then on Tuesday of this week I dropped Chris off at the doctor’s office to get his rabies vaccination injection, and I went to my dance class. When I left the dance class to pick Chris up it was dark so I had to use the headlights on his car. When I turned them on the brights were on, and I couldn’t figure out how to turn them off (his car is quite strange). I called him and he told me how he thought to do it, which didn’t work. So after arguing for a few minutes I drove to pick him up with the high beams blaring. When I got there we both looked at the car and couldn’t figure out why they were stuck on, so he called the RAA roadside service (like AAA in the US) and a guy came out to look at it. He looked for a few minutes and then flicked the turn signal handle and they went off. DUH. We felt so stupid, but I guess at least nothing was really wrong.

As icing to the cake on all this, last night I was out setting up for a count at Bat Cave and I walked past the table that had all the equipment on it and caught my foot in the power cord of the external hard drive. I didn’t realize it until too late, and I heard a loud “crack” on the rocks as it fell and hit the ground. I crossed my fingers that it was okay, but when I plugged it into the computer, the computer recognized that a USB device had been plugged in, but the computer wouldn’t pick up the hard drive and I couldn’t open any files or use it. I called the DENR service desk the next day and they said it sounds like the actual hard drive inside is damaged, and the only way to retrieve the data is to send it to a data recovery service that would charge thousands of dollars. Of course. Why should I have expected my luck to get any better? I had about 1 ½ months worth of counts on there (16 counts) and I’d only analyzed about half of them. I talked with Terry about it and he said if the cost of retrieving the data is less than $1000 he (aka the South Australian Museum) could pay for it, as he thinks the data is very important. Now I have to look into getting quotes from recovery services.

I hate ranting publicly about bad things that happen, as usually they blow over pretty quickly, but I figured all this stuff warranted a special blog entry. I just keep thinking, “What else can go wrong?” Maybe this means I’m about to have a streak of good luck and win the lottery or something. One can only hope...