My boss is on paternity leave. Which means I’m the boss. Which means a shit load of work and emails piling up by the minute. Friday was one of those days. I needed to complete an awards submission, attend a shitload of meetings, and talk to all the people who stopped by to talk and keep me away from doing the things I needed to do. I ended up staying until after 6 p.m. Not so bad until you remember I started work before 7:30 and actually left home at 6:30. (Yes, I know people work 18 hour days, but I am not a work-aholic by nature.).
Since it’s Friday in the summer, I expected a long commute home. (The last 2 Fridays were 2 hours each.) I’d hoped by leaving after 6pm I’d miss most of the traffic, but of course there were the requisite accidents. After the last two weeks, I’ve “learned” not to trust the alternate routing my GPS recommends, so I took a different alternate route. It wasn’t too bad, except that I was really hungry, having missed lunch.
Then, about 7-10 miles from home, I’m driving on the freeway when I see a tree branch hurling through the air towards me. I scan to see where it came from (a trash truck or open-ended pickup truck, for example), but see nothing out of the ordinary. I sort of duck and flinch (apparently shutting my eyes) when I hear glass shatter. I open my eyes and see…
Driver's side view
a fucking 2 foot long piece of metal sticking through my windshield! (Actually, the rod has settled. It came in at a ~135 degree angle—not the ~45 degree angle here.)
The car was still drivable, so rather than pulling off to the side of the road (after all, it is Friday night around 7 p.m. and I’m damn hungry!) I just kept driving. And now (Sunday a.m.) having been without wheels all weekend because the car rental place had nothing available for the weekend. And I get to stay home tomorrow because the body shop isn’t open on weekends so the car is still sitting in the driveway (with a couple of plastic bags over the windshield to keep (any possible) rain from coming in.
Here are a few other views:
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- Driver’s side view
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- Outside view
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- Another outside view
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- Passenger side view
I think God is telling me it’s time to retire.
Yikes! You were really lucky it didn’t hit you.
Yes, I was very glad 1) it was on the passenger side, and 2) I didn’t have any passengers.
Holy crap! I agree with Sandy, you were really lucky. Did you ever figure out where it came from?
BTW, how many days do you have left until retirement?
My neighbor was out walking her dogs when I pulled up. She said perhaps it had been lying in the road and was thrown in the air by a semi. The insurance folks that was possible.
I can retire at the end of August, but I’m really concerned about the significantly lower income. (And I just this month got a raise.) So, I don’t know.
I’m glad to hear you ended up with only damages to your car and not to yourself: I know you could have done without a broken windshield, but this is better than suffering injuries yourself, Gail.
As for your retirement, I thik it all comes down to how well you can put up with your job. I can remember my aunt who had been dreaming of retiring for years when she reached retirement age, but suddenly her job became more bearable once she had the right to retire (I guess that it was the idea of being able to leave whenever she wanted to to give her a sense of lightness).
Thanks, Francesca. Who knows, come September, things might indeed be more bearable. Actually, they’re not that bad right now. I have a great boss, and our problem children are getting better. It’s just the commute and the long hours that wear me out. Count my blessings, right?
I see your point when you mention the commute. I remember having a job years ago where the long commute left me with the feeling that too much of my time was being wasted as I had to add two hours (one to go and another to get home) on top of my working hours, so the choice was changing my job or moving… I decided to go freelance…
I wish I had your courage to freelance!
I guess that if someone had offered me a job similar to the one I was doing before I went freelance but nearer to where I lived when I considering a change, I wouldn’t be self-employed now, but I’m in a field (translations) where most people are self-employed and I think this is okay with employers, who can hire when they need you and for as long as they need you, so in-house positions are few, so I think my freelancing has more to do with my being stubborn and wishing to keep doing a job I love rather than courage.
All I could think about was “Houses of the Holy” and the ending with the metal pipe. Thank God you weren’t hit.
Yep, “Houses of the Holy” definitely came to mind! (I just couldn’t remember the title to mention it in the post.)
(BTW, take another look at the post. For some reason, the driver’s side view got lost in cyberspace so I reposted it.)
Whoa!
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