Thursday, I finally took Parker in to get full coverage on her.  Since it’s not a new car, they had to get pictures before I could get coverage beyond just liability.  I finished up at the insurance office and was on my way over to talk to the guys at Mustang Fever about getting Parker’s rear end rebuild scheduled.

Well, on the way there, I was in the far right lane and the lady in the next lane over decided that she suddenly had to go from her lane, across my lane to make a right turn.  This brought her front right bumper in contact with Parker’s left rear quarter panel.

Fortunately, being made of steel, Parker didn’t get too banged up.  Just a dent and some scraped paint.  The other car wasn’t as lucky.  That’s what happens when steel meets plastic.

The lady that hit me was super nice and very apologetic.  The whole time she kept thanking me for being so “sweet” (her word, not mine) about the whole thing.

As you can see, it really isn’t that bad.

Right after the accident, I continued with my planned activities and ended up having a nice long chat with the guys at Mustang Fever in which they actually seemed pretty interested in the plans for Parker’s engine upgrades.  In fact, the last car they had built up similar to what I am planning was in for some work, so Mitch took me back into the shop to take a look at some of the stuff they did.  The guys at that shop are great.  When I told him that I had just been hit, Mitch came out to take a look and as is usual, he showed me what I needed to do to fix a couple things on my list.

So, after spending about 45 minutes talking to those guys, I headed back home to find that the lady’s insurance company had already taken responsibility for the accident and were setting up a shop for me to get the repair work done.  Great service on their side.

On the way home, I found it really funny that not 2 miles into my new insurance policy I get hit while heading over to see my mechanics.

Ok, its not really irony, but “Forged of steel and amusing circumstances” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

See this cute puppy?  This is rebel, a Scottish Police dog-in-training.

He is also the cause of a big stir over in Scotland where Rebel has outraged the Muslim community in Tayside.  The police there started passing out postcards to make people aware of a new non-emergency contact number.  They soon started receiving phone calls from Muslims complaining about the adds because they consider dogs to be “ritually unclean”.

The police department responded with, “We did not seek advice from the force’s diversity adviser prior to publishing and distributing the postcards. That was an oversight and we apologise for any offence caused.”  This is mindnumblingly ridiculous political correctness!

I guess we can take a little comfort in knowing that other countries have to deal with this kind of nonsense as well.

An interesting point to consider:  if Rebel is a police dog, isn’t he technically an officer of the law?  So basically they are saying that they find a member of the police to be offensive.  I’ve heard a lot of people in Santa Cruz say they find police to be offensive, but it didn’t get them anywhere.

Given the approaching arrival of Audrey Katana, we’re happy to announce the launch of her official website.  The layout combines a really cool wordpress theme along with an awesome piece of work by the talented Miss Joëlle Jones.  Given a name like Audrey Katana, we asked for Audrey Hepburn holding a katana in the stance made famous by Uma in the Kill Bill one sheet.  We definitely got what we asked for.

Without further ado, please take a look at Audrey’s new site.

It works best if you have your browser maximized.