Out of the blue

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.

All I will say about mine is that good comes from bad.

At work, we had a Christmas party a couple of weekends ago. It was great fun and a catered meal with ham, corn on the cob, and real Indian oven bread! Monday night, I was intensely ill, diarrhea and throwing up (at least 5x). That's one way to get a flat abdomen but I wouldn't recommend it. I dragged in to work for a meeting only to find out that three other coworkers had been sick the night before. Out of 14 party attendees, 7 of us got sick, very sick. We figured out it was a viral thing and not food poisoning only because one person had come to the party while recovering from the same illness. My son got sick the next day, from me.

My daughter got very sick too. She was hospitalized for several days over Christmas. I completely missed all church services over Christmas because of the limited hospital visitations but seeing her better makes it all worthwhile. She is in good spirits, although depressed for missing Christmas.

I got in a wreck with my Infiniti FX45 while I was out doing some last minute Christmas shopping. It was evening and busy traffic around the mall. I was turning left and the car in the left lane stopped and waited for me to go. I waited and when I thought it was clear, I proceeded to go across. A big whack and I realized it wasn't so clear. I got nailed on the front end. All kinds of fluids dripped out and the car had to be towed. The other car was a little Mazda truck and it mostly tore off the front bumper. Thankfully, nobody was hurt.

They've been debating about totaling it or fixing it. That is the only car I currently own that I carry full insurance coverage on. All my other cars carry liability only so it would have been a complete loss if it had been any other car. This week, I found out they are totaling it. There was $17,000 worth of damages!!!! I guess it got structural damages in the frame. Gosh, there are a lot of good parts still on that car though.

I'm sad over losing my CUV, my Lola, my beautiful "muscle" car.

 We drove to San Francisco in her

and through a tree. ;)

 We drove to New York and Canada to see Niagara Falls in that car. 

It was the smartest car I've ever had. It had SmartCruise and would apply brakes automatically when in the cruise control mode. It had navigation, a back up camera and a Bose 6-cd player, anything you could want, including heated seats and reclining rear seats.

It is the end of an era. I always wanted to own one since I first saw them back in 2003 but I could only afford to buy a 4 year old used one in 2007.

But, on the bright side, maybe they are doing me a favor. It's such a high end car that maintenance and repairs on it are incredibly expensive. Now I don't have to worry about the future costs. It had 117,000 miles on it and I expected it to run for another 100,000 and more but still...

Now I get to go car shopping... If I work it right, I can fix my big truck too. It's been out of commission for a few months now with some major repairs due.


Out of the blue - song: Ashes to Ashes, artist: David Bowie, album: Scary Monsters