Mayday, May Day!

Although the telephone help-line girl was just entirely too nice to be effective, she did just manage to get my IP address renewed so that my short-bus computer would connect to the Residence Inn network. I am so impressed that I had actually done all the stuff she tried first, but I have now learnt how to use ipconfig for my own nefarious purposes. What those purposes may be, even I have not discovered yet.

My computer appears to be under the impression that it has had a hard day and therefore is unable to function without extreme assistance. Maybe it needs a cup o' caffeine poured over its motherboard.

It is late. It took me an hour and a half to get 35 miles this evening from Tarrytown to Danbury (after din dins with my looovely cousine Lindsey -- we went for Vitamin G, aka guacamole). It was rainy. It was dark. I drive like a mawmaw when it is rainy and dark. And it is a good thing that I was 2 cars and 17 seconds behind the car on the Saw Mill Parkway. I noticed some wierd lights ahead that looked like a lunatic cyclist on the parkway, and then heard screeching and saw swerving. The car, I think, veered off and hit a tree on the left side of the road, which then fell in its entirety on top of the back of the car, swinging it back around and jamming it into the side of the rocky mountain. I made my first 911 call.

The lady inside appeared not to be seriously injured, but was completely in shock.

Fortunately, none of the rest of the mass of traffic managed to form into a car pile-up. Although the tree across the road prevented any movement until they got the lady off to the hospital and got the chainsaws out. People are like moths to flame at the sight of flashing lights. We are all such voyeurs (since my car was the first in line on the left side of the road, my voyeurism was not as obvious as the flocks of people migrating 1/2 mile down to record everything with their cell phone cameras). My picture was taken after the lady was finally evacuated and they were cutting up the tree trunk. (the hood of the car is up, after they extinguished the smoke origin and the snapped tree is the paler short thing to left of the car)

Other luck of the day (besides being protected from involvement in a wreck on my third day of driving in 5 months) included:
* having good school visits
* scheduling a family pedicure outing with the Auntie and the Oma and the Mama
* navigating my way north from Princeton and onto the Jersey Turnpike using mostly my nose
* having helpful toll-booth people help me find my way when signage was inadequate
* not crying when I ended up going over the George Washington Bridge into NYC at 178th St instead of hitting Palisades Parkway (Bear enjoyed the $8.00 detour)
* finding a lone $20 bill in the street!
* and finally, going to sleep now...