Close Encounters of the Automotive Kind

I got run over by a car on Wednesday.

Well, that's an exaggeration. My foot got run over by a car on Wednesday. I was trying to cross, in a crosswalk, in front of a red SUV that was stopped at a stop sign (my first mistake), when the driver suddenly decided to make a quick right turn. Luckily, I saw him start to do it and was able to jump out of the way of his vehicle -- except that I couldn't get my left foot out of the way in time. THUMP. And a few seconds later there was a SMACK as his passenger-side mirror creamed me, snapped off, and fell into the road.

The driver immediately realized what had happened and stopped to apologize. He offered me a ride; after quickly checking that my foot was NOT a mess of broken bones or a bloody pulp, I asked him to drive me to the bus stop. I was pretty shaken up from having just escaped death or major bodily injury by a matter of inches, so I didn't get his insurance information, name, phone number, or even license plate. Second mistake.

So, I got on the bus, flipped open my laptop to see if I could play a video game or something to calm down, and discovered that the screen of my practically new laptop was smashed. Probably it got hit by the passenger mirror -- and since I have no idea who hit me, I can't even politely ask him to pay for replacing it, let alone demand.

That's the bad news. The good news is that I went to a doctor and got a confirmation (with xrays) that no bones are broken in my foot. My foot and back are sore, but they're already quite a bit better than they were (I'm barely limping at all now) and the doctor said they should be fine in a week or two if I take it easy.

I suppose the whole thing was my fault, really; yeah, I had the legal right-of-way, but I should know by now that this is a meaningless concept; a driver who isn't signalling to you is always a potential hazard, especially in Seattle at rush hour.

The upshot of this, for people seeing this on Planet Debian, is that I probably won't be doing as much Debian work in the near future. I was using my laptop on the bus to catch up on emails and work on "easy" bugs, and I don't have the money to replace it right now (I probably won't until at least January, according to my back-of-the-envelope figuring). I can get some work done on weekends, but at an even more reduced pace than I've been able to since I got a paying job. :-(