In keeping up with tradition, I have started a journal on a day that started off not-good. Previously, it was when my dog Lilly died. This time was not so sad, but still not-good. I got into my first car accident today. Thankfully the other driver was very friendly and not at all upset. I told him that this was the first time I'd ever been in an accident and he was very understanding. He also gave me the advice to take pictures of the accident so that the other person can't claim more damage was done than really was.

The Accident:

As a quick explanation of what caused me to get into an accident, in a desperate attempt to absolve myself of blame that is wholly mine, I shall recount here what happened. There's this section of highway that gives me about 200 feet to cross 5 lanes of traffic to get to my exit from the point where I merge. It so happened that it was raining today and no one was letting me in. Usually this wouldn't be a problem, since until recently I had been in a habit of waiting until there was a large enough gap in all lanes for me to get through. For the past few days, however, I had been merging into the first lane and merging left repeatedly and made it to the exit in time.

This does not work when no one lets you in. I was looking over my shoulder to try and determine if I had enough space in front of the car to my left to start quickly merging into their lane. Unfortunately, I had not looked ahead before doing this. Had I done so, I would have noticed that there was a line in this lane for some reason. The car in front of me was slowing down and I did not realize it until I was too close to do much about it.

I don't remember putting my foot on the brakes, and I doubt that I did. I've noticed in the past that I have a bit of a problem with quickly switching to brakes when I get panicked. Luckily, I think I was already slowing down, since that's what I do while trying to merge left when a car's there. I like to let them get well in front before making the merge. This habit wasn't so good here since I was actively trying to get over as fast as possible, but it worked out. The collision was slow enough that the airbags didn't go off. There was no damage to my car, and only a large dent in the rear end of the other person's.

After I finally got to the office, I texted my mom about what had happened and she started guiding me for my next step: making an insurance claim. I said I'd do it at lunch, but she decided to contact them earlier for me, which I found to be a bit strange. This was something I should have to deal with as an adult, and having my mom handle it, whether I intended to or not, does not facilitate this.

All in all, I'm not too concerned about the insurance. I think it will work out since it was raining and the airbags didn't go off, on a highway collision. This does mean that I was slowing down, and I think my rates won't go up too much.

The Work Day

I pretended like nothing had happened that morning and got to work. I think I wound up being more productive than usual since I was listening to music instead of watching videos out of the corner of my eye. Perhaps that's what gave me the energy to make this blog today, which I'd been thinking about doing for a while now. Maybe it's watching videos at work all day that's tiring me out mentally before I get home, causing me to not work on any of my hobbies.

Most of what I did at work was boring and uneventful. I still didn't get to try out Danny's Switch because I was too busy for it and CJ, Maki and Joana's kid, got to it well before I could. I don't like that there's been children in the workplace these past couple days, but what can you say when it's the owners' kids? Danny also still hasn't returned my copy of The Walking Dead Volume 2. I'm not in a huge hurry to get it back, though, so it's not big deal. I just hope he reads more of the story so I can talk with him about it.

The end of the work day today was really cool though. Maki has been planning on using an Arduino to make an ADB to USB cable for our two old Apple keyboards and he brought in the parts to do it today. He taught me how to solder and let me handle soldering the cables to the board! We just quickly tested it out before we both left, and it didn't work. The tutorial was for a different connection (I forget which one) than ADB, so this was expected. We'll probably have to modify the C code some. I hope I get around to trying that this weekend (especially since I told Maki I would).

On the way out, I encountered the older, heavyset guy that I've run into a couple of times before from a floor a few down from Matrix. This time he seemed to be with a work friend of his. He told me his name, as well as that of his friend. I don't remember his, but I remember his friend's name: Keith. I do, however, remember that Keith called him SilverFox, which I'm guessing is his handle. Maybe he's a furry. That would be pretty neat, since I kind of consider him a friend, even though I've only talked to him a handful of times before. He likes talking about tech, and is generally really friendly and likes things like Linux.

The Way Home

Thankfully nothing eventful happened here. I was listening to music the whole way, rather than listening to The Passage, which I think is better for me going home, since it's less to focus on. I happened to have already been listening to my Favorites playlist throughout the day and didn't change it when I got in the car, so I had a fun drive back. Sunshine & Celery Stalks particularly struck a chord with me today, for whatever reason. Felt SO good listening to that and singing along.

Home

Played with Phoebe a bit, then started reading a reddit thread that linked me to a user who tried heroin once because he thought he could handle it and objectively report on what it was like, then never touch it again. He turned out to be very wrong and got addicted right away. After two weeks his life was falling apart and he wanted to die. Whenever things would get on the upswing and not be so bad, he convinced himself that he'd be able to handle it this time not need to get any help. It kept getting worse and worse until he had almost died twice from overdose and had to be hospitalized. He was so arrogant in his first post, the day after he took it for the first time, so sure that he'd never get addicted. This guy had a masters degree. He clearly was not a complete idiot, but he still couldn't control himself over it. I think reading that was enough to guarantee I'd never want to get into drugs.

Other than that, I watched Supernatural with my family. My mom's weight is really worrying me. She had the couch extended with her feet up, which she rarely does, to let her toenails dry and she looked like she was melting into the seat. When she tried to get up, it took several tries. I'm really worried about both of my parents dying early, preventable deaths because they can't get their weight under control. I'm almost getting sick of trying to help my mom, who's by far the worse of the two. I always try to be encouraging, but when I try to guide her back after she lapses, she won't do it. I've argued with her over a bag of food, with her stuffing her mouth as fast as possible because she knew what she was doing was wrong and would have to stop very shortly. It's so sad and frustrating. I'm never going to let that happen to me again.

After that, I made this account and started coding up this blog. I knew I'd want to have each page seem united under one theme, so I used javascript to code the header, sidebar, and footer. I set up a nice folder structure for the site, and I did an okay job with the styling, I think. It's just a gray theme, but I like it. And if I ever decide I don't like it, it's very easy to change throughout the whole site.

I showed the site a bit to Fef, because I was proud of making it and wanted to show it to someone. I do intend for this to be a personal blog that is here primarily for me to reflect on one day since my memory is shit. I don't think anyone else will read these words, except maybe Fef (Hi, Fef!). I'm cool with that since we were so close for so long, but I'm still probably going to be posting some really uncomfortable, very personal things here in the time to come. I know there's a risk of someone finding me through the social features of neocities, but that's a risk I'm willing to take. Hopefully I'm too boring for most people to read through this.

This was fun. Now I just have to remember to do it every day.