A Series of Unfortunate Events
© 2024 Mark McWiggins
Subtitled: trying to make as sweet a batch of lemonade out of a lemony year as I could manage.
On 13 December 2023, I had lost my wallet and had parked my Kia Ev6 outside the driver’s license office in Kent WA, just before they were supposed to close at 5 pm. I didn’t get to my place in line until after 6pm, and when I got out to the parking lot, some (presumable) idiot had parked one micrometer from my Kia.
I had just started the car and was going to ever-so-carefully back around this other car, but I found that I could not shift out of park!
My wife came and got me. I called Kia support for 10 days before I finally got an answer where they had towed the car: this tow company in Burien WA. I went up there to claim the car to get the closest Kia dealership (one in Renton) to come and get it. The price for this: $2380. yikes.
At the time, I had an excellent job with the Clearspring Insurance Company, where my boss was in Atlanta.
First, to continue with the car story: I called and called and called and nobody ever called me back. I went over to the dealership several times and never got an answer, just things like “we only have one EV guy and he’s not here today.” Huh?? You don’t have a computer system where all the techs put their report of the work they’d done into the computer?
“We don’t have computers” … clearly, they DID have computers, as I got a computerized BILL … but what he meant was that he didn’t have computers with the right user interface that was designed for the shop floor.
I tried to interview him to gently suggest that he could use a manual system with filing cabinets, but I never got that done.
About that time, my wife got disgusted with the dealership (she’s intuitive, my wife; you’ll see) and let them repossess the car.
(Note that this does NOT apply to all Kia dealerships, just this particular one at this particular time.)
They later have been caught still using the car to go across toll bridges and various other places, but the car was still in my name. (I just tried to verify on the DOL site, but it wasn’t working.)
Then on January 19, 2024 I lost my job. But I immediately applied for unemployment and with my social security (which I got starting in January, while nowhere near as good as my 2023 income, was enough to live on without stretching every penny until it screamed.)
First in June, I broke my right hip. I was walking with my wife from the home we were renting at the time and goofed trying to take my shoe off while stepping off the curb and bang.
I lay there thinking “wow, probably a bad bruise”. But my wife called the ambulance and they got me to the (excellent) Lakewood hospital quickly where I had to stay for 10 days recovering. I have no complaint at all about the hospital staff except one quibble with the bathrooms near the entrance. At the time they seemed to have 2 second timers so I had to wave my arms around while sitting on the toilet to keep the lights on.
But when I got out, I felt good enough to resume my normal schedule .. I haven’t gotten to play any golf yet, due to economics rather than not being able to walk. My daily goal in summer months is 7000 steps, and I plan to take the local bus to Costco to get some exercise this coming Winter.
Then in July, I lost my unemployment. “apply in 6 months” they said.
Try living without a large chunk of your income and see what that does to your life.
One change it made: it got me into hyperdrive trying to find a job. I started staying up later and later, which turned out to be lucky in one respect.
One night my wife and I were out late with the local Kayak group and some other shopping and other stops we had to make and I only got on the computer after midnight.
But then I found out that Workday wasn’t available at all that night and even Indeed was having trouble with getting the email sent to get it returned to “verify my account.”
I waited a few minutes more to see if the email would come in but just finally gave up in annoyance …
Then (as often happens) I got what seems to be a great idea in the middle of the night:
That’s it …
