The Bad.

Tim and I ran a ton of errands last Tuesday, including going to the courthouse in Bradenton to get passports. Parking was at a premium, so we had to park on the street a block away.When we left, we decided to go get lunch before Tim went to work. (We were on a stretch of 44 days without a day off together, so we thought grabbing lunch would be good quality time. We were parked on opposite sides of the street (we drove separately so he could go straight to work, and it was a 1-hour parking zone), so I told him I'd back up and turn around to follow him.

I backed in to a wall. Hard. Tim saw the glass from my brake light shatter, and we both reparked and he came across the street, where I broke in to huge, baby-like sobs (he said it reminded him of his young nephew bursting in to tears). Luckily, no one was hurt and the car was still driveable. But that didn't stop me from bawling halfway through our lunch, where the waiters seemed frightened of me. I'm sure they assumed someone had died or I'd just lost my job. But I think it was everything that has been building up - the break-in, the wallet ordeal, the moving to Bradenton, the going to school, the working 40 hours or more a week, the wedding planning and then ... the car.

I called my insurance company and found out that it could be taken care of quickly, and I had two options - take it to a repair shop and have them work with Progressive on estimates, re-estimates, etc., or I could drop it off at a Progressive Service Center and they would give me a rental car, do the estimate and have the repairs done at a Progressive-approved shop and then I could go there and pick the car up when it was done. The repairs have a life-time guarantee, and no matter where I'm living, I can contact Progressive and they'll take care of paint chips, faulty parts, etc. The service center was about 40 minutes away, but I wanted the car to be worked on while I was in Phoenix and the hassle-free appeal won me over.

Turns out I did quite a bit of damage ... $1,400 and five days of repairs worth of damage. Broken brakelight, interior bumper damage, rear panel something, blah blah blah. On Wednesday, I dropped off the rental car, paid the painful deductible and got my repaired Honda.

Really, I hope this is the end of our misfortune/bad luck. 2008 has not been the nicest.

And, continuing with the trend, "The Good" is soon to come.