Hobby Takes Back Seat

My wargaming hobby has taken a back seat lately, with "real life" intruding.

First I received word last month that Tropical Storm Lee had dumped excessive rain water on the roof of the StorageMax building in which I had a bunch of stuff stored.  After 17 days I was able to have their hired workers (they wouldn't let the unit renters inside) recover my possessions.  About six cardboard boxes were wet.  But unfortunately they included photographs, negatives, and slides from my late parents house and a batch of old SPI/S&T military board games.  I lost a large number of slides.  It is amazing what excessive water will do to the emulsion on a color slide.  Some of them that had dried out were kept and they looked like a surrealist color painting!  As far as the wargames, I only lost three S&T magazines, part of the counters for one game, and all the plastic SPI storage boxes.  I lucked out there.  I'm still trying to recover the photographs and negatives but it doesn't look good.  That has taken a huge bite out of my evening hobby time.

Then last Thursday morning my younger daughter was in an auto wreck as she drove from her home to a local community college to teach a dance class (She is an adjunct instructor there).  Traffic on the Interstate highway was heavier than normal causing her to have to slow down.  Unfortunately the driver of the pick-up truck behind her evidently wasn't paying attention and hit her.  My daughter saw the truck coming, tried to steer out of the way, and, when she realized she would hit, braced herself.  She came out of the accident with only bruising and scrapes on her left forearm from the airbag deploying as her car went nose first into a concrete retaining wall/lane divider.  But her "baby" - a 2006 Mustang GT - was totaled.

There I was, just cruising on down the road, when I got nailed from the back.

Oh, my poor, aching nose!  That concrete was hard!!

"You tink dis looks bad?  You shoulda seed de udder guy!"

Finally, a picture of my "good" side.

 But there was "ray of sunshine" about her wreck.  A lady stopped immediately after it happened and rendered assistance her her, calming her down.  A man also stopped and called 911.  The driver of the pick-up actually stopped as well, but we won't say much more about her, other than her pick-up received only minor (I think) damage.  The local policeman was courteous, caring, and compassionate; the ambulance attendants were very caring and professional; and the emergency room staff where she was taken "just in case" were efficient and professional.  Even through the shock and worry of her daddy, I appreciated what they did.  The lady who stopped even called back at the end of the day to check on how she was doing.

And to add insult to injury, the standard transmission on my car seized up late Saturday afternoon, forcing me to call both my wife and a tow truck for succor -- my wife to offload my wargaming figures and terrain (after running a game earlier that day) and the tow truck to carry my badly wounded chariot to the repair shop, where he awaits their, hopefully, tender ministrations on Monday morning.

I'll be glad when life returns to a sense of normalcy.

UPDATE:  When the mechanic went out to my car Monday morning, he discovered that the gear shift was "miraculously" free and the transmission worked perfectly.  We guess that all the jouncing and bouncing the wrecker operator had to do to get the car off his flat-bed wrecker unstuck whatever was stuck in the transmission.  So for just a towing charge (reimbursable by my auto insurance), some inconvenience, and a few more gray hairs, I have my car back.  Hoorah!!