fr_defenestrato (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fr_defenestrato) wrote2007-09-17 12:29 pm
fr_defenestrato) wrote2007-09-17 12:29 pm
Sick & tired of being sick & tired...
I somehow managed, starting Friday afternoon with some unusually vociferous sneezing, to acquire a new cold directly on top of the last remnants of the cold I had in Nawlins. The good news is that I seem to have skipped the whole "general malaise/no energy/fever" period and jumped right into the snotty symptoms. The bad news is, whereas the Nawlins bug was almost exclusively sinusy, this one includes a persistent cough. Fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck.
Budget Car Rental and I-95 gave me an enthusiastic assist on Saturday for blowing off the wedding I was supposed to go to: the original plan was to drive the rental car (replacement vehicle for the one I got into an accident with) back to Philadelphia late morning/noonish and grab a Greyhound (or, if properly timed, one of those few Amtrak trains that stops at the Newark, Del. station) in order to get to Arthur & Meredith's wedding at 4 p.m. Well, I got up later than planned, since every tentative waking up reminded me that I had a cold and, well, fuck that noise; thus left the house later than planned, thinking, well, if I miss the ceremony I can at least show up for the reception. Nope. Traffic was nasty even getting out of D.C. What the hell was everybody doing on the road early Saturday afternoon? Yikes. Then two miles of standstill traffic before the harbor tunnel toll. Amazingly, no traffic in Delaware until the very end of I-495, where began a zero-to-five mph. torture that lasted more than an hour, until I stopped at the Penna. welcome center and got local detour directions to Phila. through Marcus Hook. I get to the airport and drop off the car. The Budget guy rings me in and gives me a receipt that boggles my mind: $609.xx. On a rental for which I was quoted a daily rate of something like $21 (plus insurance, tax, fees, whatnot).
I took the receipt inside: I also needed to turn in my accident report from the police and, I had been told, fill out a report of my own. The customer report had precisely the same information from the police report, but I dutifully filled it in... just like filling out an employment application with every last datum on your resume. Humans are just so profoundly stupid. Then I see a notation that makes my heart take a brief holiday in or around my throat: "If you have declined [whatever they call the insurance type] you are responsible for all damage regardless of fault." Of course I had paid for only liability insurance on the vehicle... now I'm wondering what that even means. If liability doesn't pay the damages to the rental vehicle itself, what DOES it insure against? I seem to have had my terms wrong.
Looks like I'm going to have to consult a lawyer and sue the other driver. Dammit.
Anyway, all this took an additional hour, what with waiting in the main customer line at Budget and then waiting for the one managerial person I needed to speak with to appear. Then waiting for the SEPTA train to center city... and it's now about 6 p.m... Fuck it, I'm going home. Buy an Amtrak ticket from the machine and voilà: the train is boarding. Uneventful ride home, during which I listen to the first edit of the new Cheese Lord record and mark down errors and weak spots and things I just don't like about it, for collection & integration with other lords' comments, to guide our producer in working on the next edit.
Yesterday: work-work, all day. Made a yummy stir-fry for lunch: broccoli, cauliflower, string beans, TVP "chicken" strips, water chestnuts, fried eggoid (yolkless stuff in a carton). Lots of red pepper.
This morning, wide awake at 6 and no chance of claiming that last half hour. Head to Stately Cheeselord Manor by 7:30 for carpool to the Kennedy Center where we soundcheck and then sit around forever while the KC Board of Trustees meeting convenes and gets ready for their standard mini-dose of entertainment. SCL was asked to perform to mark the a cappella festival that KC will host later this season—a festival, BTW, in which SCL has not as of this writing been invited to perform (Chanticleer and Anonymous 4 will be there, but we plebes were local and handy... one hopes our two songs this morning will prompt the powers that be to schedule us for that fest). Meanwhile I'm doing all the rehearsing and actual singing just a hair's breadth from coughing up a lung.
Budget Car Rental and I-95 gave me an enthusiastic assist on Saturday for blowing off the wedding I was supposed to go to: the original plan was to drive the rental car (replacement vehicle for the one I got into an accident with) back to Philadelphia late morning/noonish and grab a Greyhound (or, if properly timed, one of those few Amtrak trains that stops at the Newark, Del. station) in order to get to Arthur & Meredith's wedding at 4 p.m. Well, I got up later than planned, since every tentative waking up reminded me that I had a cold and, well, fuck that noise; thus left the house later than planned, thinking, well, if I miss the ceremony I can at least show up for the reception. Nope. Traffic was nasty even getting out of D.C. What the hell was everybody doing on the road early Saturday afternoon? Yikes. Then two miles of standstill traffic before the harbor tunnel toll. Amazingly, no traffic in Delaware until the very end of I-495, where began a zero-to-five mph. torture that lasted more than an hour, until I stopped at the Penna. welcome center and got local detour directions to Phila. through Marcus Hook. I get to the airport and drop off the car. The Budget guy rings me in and gives me a receipt that boggles my mind: $609.xx. On a rental for which I was quoted a daily rate of something like $21 (plus insurance, tax, fees, whatnot).
I took the receipt inside: I also needed to turn in my accident report from the police and, I had been told, fill out a report of my own. The customer report had precisely the same information from the police report, but I dutifully filled it in... just like filling out an employment application with every last datum on your resume. Humans are just so profoundly stupid. Then I see a notation that makes my heart take a brief holiday in or around my throat: "If you have declined [whatever they call the insurance type] you are responsible for all damage regardless of fault." Of course I had paid for only liability insurance on the vehicle... now I'm wondering what that even means. If liability doesn't pay the damages to the rental vehicle itself, what DOES it insure against? I seem to have had my terms wrong.
Looks like I'm going to have to consult a lawyer and sue the other driver. Dammit.
Anyway, all this took an additional hour, what with waiting in the main customer line at Budget and then waiting for the one managerial person I needed to speak with to appear. Then waiting for the SEPTA train to center city... and it's now about 6 p.m... Fuck it, I'm going home. Buy an Amtrak ticket from the machine and voilà: the train is boarding. Uneventful ride home, during which I listen to the first edit of the new Cheese Lord record and mark down errors and weak spots and things I just don't like about it, for collection & integration with other lords' comments, to guide our producer in working on the next edit.
Yesterday: work-work, all day. Made a yummy stir-fry for lunch: broccoli, cauliflower, string beans, TVP "chicken" strips, water chestnuts, fried eggoid (yolkless stuff in a carton). Lots of red pepper.
This morning, wide awake at 6 and no chance of claiming that last half hour. Head to Stately Cheeselord Manor by 7:30 for carpool to the Kennedy Center where we soundcheck and then sit around forever while the KC Board of Trustees meeting convenes and gets ready for their standard mini-dose of entertainment. SCL was asked to perform to mark the a cappella festival that KC will host later this season—a festival, BTW, in which SCL has not as of this writing been invited to perform (Chanticleer and Anonymous 4 will be there, but we plebes were local and handy... one hopes our two songs this morning will prompt the powers that be to schedule us for that fest). Meanwhile I'm doing all the rehearsing and actual singing just a hair's breadth from coughing up a lung.