Money like Water thru a Sieve

After discovering my truck stolen I made several calls, including the police, insurance, work, and so on. Then I went online to look for a rental car.

I finally found a deal - one week for $150 - made the reservation then lost it when the computer crashed.* Finally, I was able to call National and verify.

Once there, the woman quoted me an additional $175 for insurance, which I refused, citing my own insurance. No problem.

Then I called my insurance to confirm I could get full coverage. Problem:

"We can't offer you full coverage because the vehicle upon which your policy is based is no longer in your possession. We can offer liability, but cannot expand your policy without first examining your car, which, of course is currently not possible."

Uh-huh.

Now at this point, my finances were at a particularly low ebb:

1. I'd flown into Aspen for the Memorial Day Weekend. (The one thing I'd actually planned on).

2. The following weekend, in a somewhat spur-of-the-moment act, M and I moved in together, and I had to come up with my part of the deposit money, utilities, etc.

3. In the same month, I had to take half a paycheck because our company had been bought out and Home Depot was "restructuring" our pay. (In other words, withholding the money for an additional two weeks to take advantage of the float and make more money themselves. Blah blah blah.)

The good news about the switch, they told us, was that we could borrow our own money out of the following paycheck if we really needed to. Also, they gave us a whole month advance notice.

4. I got a speeding ticket.

5. A big mean kid beat me up and took my lunch money.

Okay, I'm kidding about that last part but with all of the aforementioned -plus- my standard bills (not to mention the need to come up with a down payment) it was definitely the month of money like water thru a sieve.

The moral of the story is that I rented the car without full coverage.

Then, for the several days, each and every little noise: the dog next door, a person walking down the street, even the wind in the trees - all alerted me to the possibility of an intruder, and I would stalk thru the house at all hours, peering out windows and compulsively eyeing the rental car like Smeagol and his precious ring.

In fact now that I'm writing this, I think I'll just take a quick peak outside to make sure everything's cool. Be right back.

Okay, its still there. (Gollum!)

Now where was I?

Pretty soon, M was getting no sleep either (I can't imagine why) and we were both going slightly crazy, though pretending not to.

Then, the next stage of sleep deprivation hit, and (for me at least) things started getting... kinda wonky.

You know the bit from "Fight Club" where Ed Norton talks about insomnia, sleep deprivation, and maybe even sanity?

"Was I awake or was I dreaming?" and "Everything is like a copy of a copy of a copy."

Things started getting sort of... fuzzy like that.

And then the little accidents started happening.

footnote #1: M has a Mac, which sometimes has issues with Microsoft based forms.