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May 7, 2001--

Melissa continues to do well after the roll over accident a week ago today. I went to the auto storage yard where the 3 year old black 1998 Ford Contour awaits its ultimate fate. I suppose that would be either auction or demolition. Maybe both. I went to reclaim whatever items were left in the car and to take some pictures. Too bad I didn't bring a camera with me to the scene when I drove out to meet Melissa last Monday afternoon. I wasn't thinking quite that clearly. At that time the car was resting quietly, solidly on its roof, wheels pointing to the sky. It didn't seem to be dead, but the insurance company claims otherwise.

Fortunately Melissa is quite healthy and in good shape. This is a shock considering that the car rolled over on the driver's side door. The only cuts she got were from the tiny broken pieces of glass on her legs from the shattered driver's window that lay on the ceiling of the car which was now the floor as she crawled out otherwise unscathed. A combination of a newly surfaced road, low shoulder, and lower depression on the shoulder contributed to the loss of control as the car's right tires went off the road. I'll bet the window smashed because of its collision with a road sign that met it square on and then was snapped off and thrown elsewhere. It was definitely God's hand that kept her from dying in the accident or being seriously maimed.

The other thing that is a surprise is that there is really very little apparent damage to the car! On cursory evaluation it would seem the car would be repaired and back in our possession after a few weeks. The pictures I just took will show that there is surprisingly little damage. The roof is dented in as would be expected but not collapsed as you'd think it should be. there are no massive dents or scrapes elsewhere, except for the driver's side mirror being busted up and that side of the car being scraped from the roll. See for yourself from these photos.

So we will be a one car family for the first time in many years 'til we figure out what we can do. It seems unlikely that we'd be able to get a loan for a newer vehicle and the small amount that will be left over after the settlement pays off the car will not make for a good down payment. But we'll take it a day at a time. Things could be a whole lot worse if what happens during most other serious accidents occurred in this one. It is satisfaction enough Melissa was able to walk away unharmed.

On a lighter note our computer seems to be healthy again. This, of course, is stated with full realization that anything could go wrong at any minute for any reason. But it is nice while it works well. Even the hard drive that caused the last commotion is back in use as a mirror of this current installation. I formatted it and the sector is now flagged as bad so no new data will be written to it. So I copied my current C: drive to it with Ontrack's Filecopy utility which copies a hard drive's contents file for file and becomes a duplicate. I booted to it to test it to make sure it would work and it did. So if anything happens to the C: drive now I can easily switch to the mirror and not miss a beat. So the plan goes, anyway.

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