The accident is officially dealt with. (Providing of course that the other person doesn't challenge ICBC's ruling.) Despite the fact that over a year's worth of payments had been made on the car, it still cost us about $3,000 more than what ICBC gave us to pay out the loan in full. I did make sure that ICBC gave us fair market value for the car, but apparently the person we took over the loan from was shafted by the dealership, either that or it's natural for a 2000 Ford Focus ZX3 to devalue by about $5,000 in a little over a year (June 2004 to October 2005). I made an appointment to see the only person who manages loans at the JW Auto Group for 3:00. I showed up at 2:50, she was out untill 3:52. It was just as well that I spent over an hour sitting and waiting (and they didn't even have the usual assortment of shitty magazines I've come to expect in that situation) because when I did get to see her I had to stand behind her in her cubicle because there were no chairs and no room for a seat anyway. Actually working out dollar amounts and handing over cheques was less than 10 minutes, it would have been nice if I had been able to do it earlier. Coming up with the money was tough, but I was able to do it, although it unfortunately meant our line of credit is maxed out again (although it has a much lower interest rate, so that's slightly better), as well as using up the cash Jenn got for her birthday. On the other hand, spending that money now means it will be free later to pay off Jenn's DVDs when Amazon gets them in three to five weeks, so it's all the same in the end.

After that, it was smooth sailing. Minimal waits for the busses, went to the insurance place and cancelled the insurance, and since I had the claim number I was able to back date it, so ICBC is sending us another cheque for $147 (the other one being a refund of 75% of the deductable, since I was only 25% at fault), and there will be no payment for insurance coming out on thursday, which helps a lot with making sure our cheque for the loan payment won't bounce.

Then it was on to groceries. Nearly everything I got was on sale, and I completely forgot that today was Welfare Tuesday, so I got an additional 10% off for being ugly and wearing sweat pants, so all told over $60 worth of groceries was around $45. Jenn and I bought me a new backpack yesterday, as the old one had a strap broken off. I really didn't want one with the layers of vertical compartments, but that was my only option between about 6 different stores, so I got the best one I could. I now believe that my backpack is awesome, the outer verticle layers kept my umbrella upright and my transit schedules flat, and the main compartment easily held 8 Chef Boyardee cans, a 4L jug of milk, a 1kg box of frozen chicken strips, a regular sized styrofoam tray of beef, a small block of cheese, 200g of mushrooms and five packets of sandwich meat. And it was still comfortable.

About five minutes after I got home the landlord showed up to collect rent, which I had exact change for from the shop (also a plus), then I polished off some leftovers and had a beer for dinner, and now theres lots of candy (zero goblins last night), He-Man, and dismantling the Halowe'en Lego waiting for me. In other words, life is alright.

I don't think I ever want to take a loan out on a vehicle again, though. A car is considered to be an asset, but I've never found them to be anything but a liability, what with repairs and the barracudas you have to buy the cars from in the first place. In fact, I think I won't have a problem living without a car for as long as I can. The only reason I can think of to need a car again would be when Jenn and I want children, but I'm thinking that won't be for a while. Even then, I think I'll go for a lease rather than owning.

Long time no update. Jenn's birthday went incredibly well, her blog has most of the goings-on. One thing that sticks out in my mind is that I got to use the charcoal chimney I bought for the first time, and wow, that thing works like a hot damn. It really is amazing how having the right tools for the right job makes things so much easier. No lighter fluid, no messing around, just stick paper in the bottom, charcoal in the top and let it burn. My beer was generally well-recieved, I think the general consensus was "not great, but drinkable", which was really all I was hoping for. I wish a little more of it got drunk though, I still have about 15 bottles to finish up on my own. Unless I have guests who want to share with me.

Aside from that, things are moving along. Getting used to taking transit to work, it's not too bad. Gave my statement of what happened to ICBC yesterday, just have to wait for them to attribute fault and then I can look into cancelling my insurance. I have the stuff for paying off the car (which seems to have devalued $5000 in a little over a year), so I just have to make an appointment to get that taken care of. I can't wait to have this over with.

In other news, here's something amusing and sad I read about in the newspaper. And here's something I found trying to track down the previous item.

Also, Lego has bought a license for Batman, sets to come next year. I definately won't buy this. I hope that by the time I have kids to buy toys for Lego will be making their own original stuff, expecially for their Space theme, which hasn't had anything new since Life on Mars in 2001, which wasn't very much like regular Space Lego. The last of that kind of thing was Insectoids in 1998. As much as I love Star Wars, I want to see something original happening again.

UPDATE: 2HRS LATER

ICBC called, they've attributed 25% of the fault to me because I admitted (and witnesses verified) that I entered on the yellow. This is low enough that my insurance premiums won't be affected, and I'll get 75% of my deductable refunded to me. This is good enough for me, so I'm not going to challenge it. All that remains is to cancel the insurance and pay out the car.

First, an update from my last post: that set I won turned out to be a 1:10 scale technic Ferrari racer set, with working pistons and moving steering and such. Not something I really wanted, so I gave it to Tim for his birthday since I remembered him telling me about a similar technic model he had fond memories of when he helped me assemble the Life on Mars sets. The money I saved on purchasing his gift I used to buy a He-Man figure on eBay to replace my old one who's arm had broken off. Win-win situation.

THE MOVE

Packing! I had lots of stuff in boxes at my folks' place long before the move, and kept putting more stuff over there. We booked two U-Hauls, one for Tuesday, June 28, and another for Friday, July 1. We were hoping to get the keys by tuesday morning so we could move in before the end of the month, but that didn't happen. Instead, Russel let us move all of our junk into his living room and we stayed at my folks' place for a couple days. On tuesday Jenn and I had about 5(I think) people helping us, and it took about 5 hours to load the truck, partially due to last minute packing of odds and ends, partially due to divvying up stuff with Kim, partially due to waiting for the freaking elevator. To illustrate the magnitude of these delays, unpacking the truck at Russel's took 45 minutes, with just Russel and me doing it alone. Then I went to my folks' place and cleared out my old room enough for Jenn and I to sleep there for three nights, which took me untill 1am, and at 5am I got up to face a 12 hr shift at work. Needless to say, it sucked. It sucked so much I tracked down my boss and asked to have the next day off for cleaning, which he let me take. So thursday morning Jenn went straight to the old apartment from work, and I came by and took over vacuuming and shampooing. It seemed like I pulled up a beach's worth of sand from the carpet, and couldn't figure out why at first, but I eventually realized that it was just cat litter everywhere. Freaking cat. We got it all done, but the landlord couldn't come that day, so we made an appointment for the next morning. Later on I got a call from the new landlord, he had the keys for me, so I threw some stuff in the car and got the keys. Russel had been offering the use of his trailer on friday, which I was unsure of because of the weather, but it was looking good as I drove out, so I cancelled the second H-Haul and called Russel to take him up on his offer. He phoned me a short while later offering to take the bed over that night while we knew we had good weather, which sounded good to me, so my Dad and I made a trip with a few essentials and got that taken care of. Friday was the big move, which was over in about two to three hours, and it would have taken less time if the landlord hadn't given me one key that didn't work (the other was with Jenn, and I had to retrieve it). Derek showed up to help take in the last couple boxes, and I bought him and Russel lunch at the spaghetti factory for helping. I got Jenn from my folks' place that evening, and bought my family pizza for all their help. With the move done, it was time for unpacking, and the purchasing of things we were missing (wooden spoons, cookie sheets, cordless phone, toilet scrubber and plunger, two futon couches, etc...) thereby eradicating a surplus of dollars from Jenn's tax return. Our first sunday tea was July 16, and we had a mad scramble to get the place clean and assemble my barbecue, but we got everything ship shape without any snags. Tea was a great success and we had one of our new neighbours out, which was cool. After I fired up my grill and drank beer and ate burgers and was a very happy man. Since then, just little tweaks getting things a little homier, putting up Jenn's Welsh flag in the bedroom, reassembling the Star Destroyer*, that kind of thing. We're still needing stuff, but we've settled in enough for now.

THE MOVIE

So I've seen Episode 3 of Star Wars three times now, and that's enough for me untill it hits DVD and I can afford a big expensive box of all six movies. The first time I watched it I was absolutely shocked by how dark it was. I knew George Lucas wanted to make it dark, but I was expecting it to be as dark as Episode 2 was romantic. It confirmed a few theories for me (who killed Dooku, what happens to the droids), and answered a couple questions (exactly how does Obi-Wan get Anakin's lightsaber, how does Anakin take the news of being the chosen one), and also gave me something new (how does Obi-Wan know to join the force in Episode 4 but Vader does not). I still don't believe in comparing the old trilogy to the new one, because they're different movies made in different eras with different values portraying different themes with a different crew, and it can even be argued that George Lucas is a different person, the older, experienced and highly successful artist revisiting an old masterpiece instead of the young visionary flying by the seat of his pants, dodging cancellation by a hair drawing on his favourite classic movies for inspiration. In other words, STOP COMPARING APPLES AND ORANGES PEOPLE! Overall, Episode 6 remains my favourite original movie, even more so now because I felt that Anakin was a pawn of the force and I'm glad to see him redeemed. My favourite prequel movie is Episode 1 (and while I'm not a Jar Jar fan, his frothing-at-the-mouth critics can bite me), because it's so bright and colourful and it has my favourite prequel character, Qui-Gon Jinn (and if I ever buy a Force FX lightsaber, it will be his), although my favourite duel and space battle are both Obi-Wan vs Jango Fett, and my favourite fighter is the Episode 2 Jedi Starfighter. Final verdict: I like Star Wars, but I'm glad the movies are done with and I can geek out about other things like HE-MAN! (October 18th! I'll be at CNL when the doors open, getting my grubby little meat hooks on that DVD!)

THE PAIN

I am now the subject of the four most recent records in the first aid book at work. The first one wasn't a big deal, just nicked my pinky on a sharp piece of metal, put on a bandaid, no big deal. The second one was saturday, July 9, I tripped and fell chest first on a hard edge and bruised some ribs. The doctor said nothing was broken, no internal injuries, all the pain was from inflamation, just take ibuprofein three times a day untill it goes away. Sunday July 24, I lost my patience and put my knife in a pinch point to cut some paper, my right index finger got dragged in and a big flap of skin got torn up when I pulled it out. Again, the doctor said it wasn't too serious, just poly sporin and a bandaid, but I missed the last two hours of work because of it. Today around 10am, I was cutting paper with a retractable knife, when the knife slipped and I stabbed myself on the inside of my left forearm. Blood spurted out, and my skin folded in and I could quite clearly see the fatty tissue I had stabbed right into. This made me nauseous, but I started to feel better once I had it covered with gauze and couldn't see it any more. I took a cab to the clinic, waited an hour, got a tetnus shot, I was told it was really superficial, not a big deal, the laceration was only 2cm long, but he gave it seven stitches anyway just so that I don't have to worry about tearing it again while I'm back at work. I've taken the rest of the day off, although there's no reason why I can't go back on tuesday, so again, it's not that big a deal. The thing is, any one of these things are not that bad, but they're all mental mistakes of just not paying attention or being aware enough to work in a safe fashion, and all three happening in the course of two and a half weeks is not good. When I got back from the clinic the boss called me into his office to ask me if something was wrong that I wanted to talk about, but really my life is pretty good. The only thing I could think that would be causing this are the problems I have getting to sleep at night. Even when I go to bed at 8:30, which I did last night, after being up since 5:00am and working a 12 hour shift, it still took me at least 2 hours to get to sleep, and I just felt mentally and physically sluggish after I woke up, which is probably why I stabbed myself. I had already made the decision to see my doctor tomorrow while I was waiting in the clinic, because I haven't slept well since the move, and when I told the boss this, he was glad that I was aware of my problem and that I was taking the initiative to do something. My appointment is for tomorrow afternoon, hopefully I can get some good advice about my sleeping habits.

*As an aside, I have learned that Mega Bloks is a Canadian company, which makes them suddenly far less evil in my mind. While I have no compulsion to start collecting Mega Bloks (despite how cool the Ninja Turtle sets are), I do want to get the USS Enterprise to go with the Star Destroyer.

I got to use my first aid training at work today. You know when you get a cut that goes into your skin sideways how it sometimes leaves a loose flap of skin? Well, one of the forklift drivers did that to the print area of his right pinky, and the flap was a circle about 2cm diameter that was still just barely attatched near the tip. He did this around 8am, but didn't talk to one of the first aid attendants untill noon, when it was still bleeding. I had him take off the bandaid he had put over it, and my first impulse was butterfly closures (the first aid equivalent of stitches). Then I thought "How the hell do I array butterfly closures in a circle?" So I flushed it with salene, put gauze overtop and secured it with tube gauze (tube gauze is awesome, Jenn should be able to attest to that since she was my casualty for an evening when I took the first aid course). Then I filled out the paperwork and called for a cab to take him to the drop in clinic. The company account information on the wall was wrong, so the cab company told me I'd have to pay cash, so I phoned the boss at home, and he got it straightened out. When the forklift driver came back from the clinic, they'd given him a tetanus shot and six stitches in his finger, so I'm glad I made the decision to send him. The doctor recommended he take two weeks off to heal, but he doesn't want to do that and we can't make him, so he finished the day and tomorrow he'll be back again and I need to check him out in the morning and make sure he's good to go.

On a happier note, which is happier by virtue of the fact that nobody got hurt, I finally got the missing parts from the Air Blazers Lego set. Most of them, anyway. I was missing 182 pieces, now I am only missing 11. The question is, should I just buy the 11 pieces from bricklink, since that's usually a more reliable route, or should I stand on principle and harass Lego some more? I guess it depends on what those 11 pieces cost.