My Glasses Are Half Fool

So there I am on the sofa in our sun room, which this time of year is more like the cloud room, but regardless I am there.  I am relaxing.  I am contemplating the meaning of life sleeping.

The doorbell rings.  The dogs start barking like there is an axe murderer on our front porch.

I get up to go let the axe murderer in.  I’m pretty sure it is the tow truck guy (well, what would you call him) who has come to start my daughter’s car.  Her battery ist kaput and I couldn’t jump-start it with either our van or my jeep.  He said he’d be here in 90 minutes, which gave me plenty of time to contemplate the meaning of life.

But he still could be an axe murderer, because I can’t see at this point.

I look around for my glasses.  I always put them on the coffee table by the couch while I am contemplating things.  But they are not there.

As I pass through the kitchen, I try to search for them–but they are not in any of the places they usually are when they are not on the coffee table while I am contemplating things.

Worse yet, I can’t see more than a couple of feet in front of me without them, which makes finding them more challenging.

As I pass my office, I check in there to be sure I didn’t leave them on my desk or near the computer, which is where I always leave them when I am working on the computer and contemplating important things, like why I haven’t written a blog entry since January 24th.

The dogs are still barking as if the axe murderer has now killed someone on our porch, or perhaps he’s just getting ready to jump-start our door bell.

So I grab my spare pair of glasses–the ones I generally wear to run–because I can actually find them and I want to be sure the man–or woman, sorry to sound sexist–on my porch is a tow truck person and not an axe murderer before I open the door and allow my dogs to feast on his or her flesh.  Wow!  That was one sentence.  I believe I broke several rules of grammar there.

So after opening the door, restraining the attack dogs, and ascertaining that the man is actually the tow truck guy, I head out to watch him jump-start my daughter’s car with what looks like a small suitcase with jumper cable clamps attached.  Yeah–the batteries from our cars couldn’t start this baby.  Good luck with your little PlaySkool kit there.

Well, to my surprise, the portable defibrillator he brought started the car right up.  I know when you stick a screwdriver into an electrical socket, bad things happen.  I call it being handy with a screwdriver.  I never could understand electricity and when you start talking about cold-cranking amps you might as well be speaking Greek.  Ampere is actually derived from the French physicist, but I can’t speak French either.  He could probably resuscitate a dead person with that suitcase, but they would awake to two battery clamps pinching their nipples.  That would not be a pretty sight.

Speaking of sight . . .

As I was watching him do CPR on my daughter’s car, I ran my hand through my hair (okay, what’s left of my hair) and lo and behold . . .

I found my other pair of glasses!

Dude! Where are my glasses?

Just call me six eyes.

To his credit, tow truck guy never said anything or laughed out loud at me.

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Deer Me

We “hit” a deer.

A friend of mine was relating a story this week. She and her husband were on their way home Tuesday night after a party.  It was dark (but not a dark and stormy night.)  All of a sudden, he hit the brakes.  She looked up from her Ipad just as he “hit a deer that when flying off to the side of the road.”  She claims they even “heard glass breaking.”

Now, you may wonder why I put that in quotes.  It’s because I can’t do air quotes in a blog.

The car was still drivable so they continued home–expecting the worst.

They assumed something like this.

When they pulled into their driveway and got out, there was no visible damage to the car.  There were no broken lights or mirrors to explain the broken glass sound they allegedly heard.   She claims there was a “patch of fur” on the fender but nary a dent or scratch to indicate that a deer was launched off the roadway by impact.  She further claimed that her husband took the car to a mechanic to check and make sure there was no damage under the vehicle–and everything checked out just fine.

This led those who were listening to conclude one of the following possibilities.

1.  There was no deer.  She made it all up.  I hit a unicorn the other day with my jeep.  There was some horn on the fender, but nothing else.  See, we can do that too.

2.  They hit a reindeer, flying low across the road.  It veered away at the last second, and the glass breaking noise was actually jingle bells.

3.  They hit a Christmas Ornament (those light-up deer you see grazing in yards amidst twinkle lights) that fell off someone’s truck.  It would explain the glass, but you would expect some scratching of the vehicle.

4.  They ate some psychedelic mushrooms by accident at the holiday party they were returning from.  This is the explanation that the listening group eventually agreed upon.  It had to be the ‘shrooms.  Maybe they were drunken ‘shrooms as well.

5.  There was a deer.  It did get hit.  There was miraculously no damage (the “immaculate impaction”) and right now there is a deer in the woods trying to convince his buddies that he did indeed get hit by a car and lived to brag about it.

“Dude, that’s just a bald spot.  You didn’t get hit by a car.  Quit pulling our deer legs!”

“I swear it’s true!  See . . . they broke my glasses too!”

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You Don’t Say!

I saw this sign along a highway cautioning drivers not to text and drive . . .

But maybe they should be more specific . . .

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Progressive Thinking

Note:  I do not carry Progressive Auto Insurance, am not a spokesperson for the company and have received no financial incentive for this post.  Further, no automobiles, name-your-own-price tools or annoying Flo’s were injured in the creation of this post.  Thank you.

After hearing a Progressive Insurance commercial for the one millionth time ( I might be exaggerating, but probably not), I was finally intrigued enough to do some research on this Snapshot Discount thingy they keep promoting to save me money.

Seriously folks, what kind of company really wants to save you money?  Taking your money is how they make money.  It’s like the government, but the IRS doesn’t have to advertise.

So after a thorough Google search, I found this review from a year ago–hey, I never promised you timely information.  I never promised you anything, for that matter.  But I digress.

According to this source, the way the Snapshot gizmo works is to track your miles, when you are driving, and how many “hard brakes” you do while driving.  Now hasn’t that cleared everything up for you?

Time of day: The reason Progressive tracks what time of day you is simple: if you drive during peak hours for accidents, such as between midnight and 4 a.m., the likelihood you’ll get in an accident is much higher than if you drive during off-peak hours. If the majority of your driving is during less accident-prone hours, you may see a larger discount.

Miles driven: Many insurance companies ask drivers to supply this data, meaning that drivers track their own mileage and report that amount. Because Progressive tracks mileage digitally through the Snapshot device, the chance of an accident can be better predicted. The general idea is that the more miles you drive, the more likely you’ll get into  an accident.

Hard brakes: A hard brake is when the car’s speed decreases at a rate greater than 7 mph per second. More hard brakes per day may indicate less cautious driving. Progressive will give higher discounts to drivers with fewer hard brakes.

The more miles you drive the more likely you’ll get into an accident?  I have taken that logic one step further.  The more time you spend on the road, the more likely you are to be in an accident.  So go faster so that you get there faster.  You’ll be off the road faster and less likely to get hit.

I still have no idea what that hard brake means.  I run about 7 mph.  I can stop in less than a second.  That doesn’t sound like very much to me–in other words, I probably commit more hard brakes pulling into my garage than any discount they would allow.  And is it really my fault if some idiot pulls out in front of me?  Isn’t a hard brake better and more cost-effective for my insurance company than plowing into said idiot?  I should be rewarded for that kind of attention and reflexes.

Is it really worth a few bucks for someone I don’t know, in an office somewhere I don’t go, to know how often I am in my car, when I’m in my car, and how badly I might be driving?

Honestly, I thought the thing would track speed as well.  Maybe it does and they don’t tell you that.  Maybe they have GPS capabilities–and they don’t tell you that.  They promise they won’t give out the information to anyone else, but how do we know that?  Do I sound paranoid?  Why are you reading this anyway?  Who are you?  How did you get here?  I’m not paranoid, but I’m not sure I like the tone of your questions?

I also thought that with the way I drive, I’d probably not only not get a discount, but they would make me pay more.  According to what I’ve read, that is not true.  But you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet, except for this sentence of course.

And having that little transmitter in the car would kind of creep me out.  It would be like having Flo sitting right there with me, riding shotgun.

The face only an insurance company could love.
At least she’s not a Gecko.
I wouldn’t drive with a Gecko in my car.
I’m not a Geckophobe. It’s more a religious thing. Or not.

So do you have a Snapshot thingy in your car, and have you seen up to 30% in savings?

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