12/4/03 - "This is funny, right?"

That's what people keep telling me, and I have laughed about it some, but that's mainly because if I didn't laugh I'd probably cry.

My car was burned up in a fire. No, seriously.

http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/story/html/150590
This is the only printed information I can find on it, though apparently there were stories on the news and the radio that I had missed. The garage we brought it to to finally be fixed burned down late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning. That's why the mechanic didn't call me yesterday to give me the final word as to whether it could be fixed or if it needed a new engine. I called him today to ask about it, and he sounded really despondent and preoccupied, and when he said it was burned I thought he was kidding. I was like haha very funny, seriously, does it need a new engine? And he was like no I'm being serious, and it would probably cost less to get a new car than to fix this one with all the fire damage... and I was just like holy shit. He said that they won't know anymore until Tuesday or Wednesday of next week when they should hopefully be allowed into the building - right now the City of Auburn has seized it pending an evaluation as to whether it's safe to enter or not, and then to determine the cause of the fire. He also said that they had insurance and I would be compensated for my loss, it was just a matter of time. I told him thank you and goodbye, hung up, sat for a moment in disbelief, and started telling my coworkers what had happened in a way that I'm sure was pretty hard to understand at first because it was filled with language that would embarrass a sailor and the aforementioned laughter-so-as-not-to-cry. Linda gave me a hug and said that really it was an answer to our prayers, which is also the conclusion I've ultimately come to, though that was after two hours of walking around outside in the the biting wind, cold, and rain and thinking about it (which is a completely different story that maybe on another day would seem worth extrapolating upon. but today? that's nothing.)

Know what else would have filled this entry had my car not burned down? The fact that last night through late this morning was one of the worst windstorms that I've ever witnessed, to the point of barely being able to sleep and camping out in the living room with my roommate in our powerless, wind-shook house for fear of falling branches and trees crashing through a window upstairs. The neighborhood looks like a war zone in a battle among Ents, with astronomical casualties, and the electric company says we probably won't have our power back until Saturday morning. I'm in Kirkland tonight, but I'm not sure where I'm sleeping tomorrow night... sleeping at the house is technically a possibility, just a cold one.

So yeah. I basically came to the conclusion that perhaps all of this has been some cosmic plan to... well earlier I had it figured out, but now what I had thought sounds really silly in my head, so I'm going to think about it some more. But it's something big, that much I know. Cars don't just get set on fire with no good reason.