It was the worst of times, it was worse than that...

To sum up ...

Darr rear-ended a fellow driver while driving home from work a few weeks ago. He's fine. The lady has soft-tissue damage (otherwise known as aches and pains). The car, also known as Olive and The Dog Car, is drivable but will be donated to a worthy cause as soon as we get the Mini back, which brings us to number deux...

I hit a puddle. A PUDDLE, PEOPLE. And now we have to replace the engine in Sophie. To be fair, it was a large puddle. But seriously? Seriously? A new engine? I'm trying to consider this an expensive lesson. Thankfully, our comprehensive insurance picks up most of the tab. And the added bonus is that we can have some other work done...

Just happens that while starting the work on the engine the mechanics noticed the clutch should be replaced. We can decide to do it later but that "choice" will cost us around $2000 more than if we do it today while they have our car's parts exposed to the world. So, I chose to pay the $271 to replace the clutch. Wouldn't you?

Of course, you wouldn't want our cars' woes saga to end there, and it doesn't. Another $700 mechanic-discovered problem is that a plastic bracket that holds our radiator in place is broken. Did it break in the water? It's possible. Our insurance carrier jumped at the chance to claim it had been broken for some time although my repair shop tells me that the radiator would have fallen out if that was the case. I'm really looking forward to the protracted fight to get insurance to cover that as well - instead of claiming it as a separate incident and shelling out another $500 deductible - and if you believe that, I've got a bridge I want to sell you. Really. It's very bridgey and straddles the water.

But our misfortunes at the condo don't end there, water on the laptop means I might have fried my keyboard. The machine still turns on (Thank Zeus.) and you can see the login box but it's stuck in uppercase. Dang. I took my laptop into Apple a few days ago and rather than popping it open right then and there to see what the problem was, do you know what they told me to do? Do you? (I bet you won't guess correctly.) Cover it in rice and let the rice draw out any remaining water. The Genius tech who was helping me was clear that uncooked rice was the way to go and seemed amused when I questioned which rice - white or brown - was best suited for the job. (He recommended white.) The good news here is that I just archived the photo library to our external hard drives so if my laptop is kaput, I won't lose my photos.