Truck Returned And No Solicitation

We finally got our truck back on Friday. The first thing that I noticed was that the truck was a lot cleaner; there was no salt or other road grime plastered to the body. The total repair cost was just over one thousand dollars. As I have never been in an accident that was my fault, our insurance has a high deductible ($500). Of course, I suppose it is better than having no insurance at all. We returned our rental car on Friday. Our insurance covered the cost of the rental, but I decided to add the optional insurance. I know that our insurance would have covered any accident that we would have had in the rental car, but I did not want to be in a position where I had to fork over another $500. So, I ended up playing about $120 in optional insurance.

Rachel drove the rental back to Enterprise and I followed her in the truck. It was a bit weird to drive the truck again especially since it had been several months since I had driven it. I was a bit worried when Rachel went to work on Saturday. We were having near blizzard conditions at the time she left for work. When I heard the phone ring fifteen minutes later, my heart stopped for a bit. But, she was only calling from the gas station to say that she could not get her key into the gas cap. She came back home and with the help of some warm water, I was able to get the lock unfrozen. Fortunately, she had no further incidents.

I spent a good portion of Saturday working on clearing the driveway. I shoveled it shortly before Rachel left for work. As it was snowing non-stop, I decided to clear the driveway again a few hours later. I cleared the driveway one final time before Rachel came home. As we had between six and twelve inches of snow since the last time I cleared the driveway, I had to use our snow blower. It took me almost an hour to clear the driveway. I would have been done sooner, except that the plow came by twice and knocked more snow onto our driveway during each pass.

I have been thinking about getting a sign for the front door. Something along the lines of: “Welcome to the Gayharts / No Solicitation Please / That means that we do not need our driveway shoveled, we do not want to change our religion and we do not want to buy any cookies, magazines, candy bars or vacuum cleaners.” I know that sounds a bit harsh. But, I get tired of hearing the doorbell, walking downstairs, saying that I am really, really not interested, and going back upstairs.

Well, the temporary fix to provide electricity to our garage has failed. So, now we manually have to open the garage door. Fortunately, as the door is well balanced, it opens up easily. Well, it is usually easy to open. Occasionally, it freezes shut. Otherwise, it is only a minor inconvenience.

Tagline for today: “I rented a lottery ticket. I won a million dollars. But I had to give it back.” - Steven Wright