I left home this morning at about 7:40 am headed toward my part-time job. At 7:50 am, I got a lot more than I wanted. Now, I digress.

Today is my daughter's birthday, so I was chatting with her (on my bluetooth handsfree) about when she was born and the time of day, etc. By the way, she was born at 7:46 am thirty three years ago.

Anyway, I digress further. A few weeks ago, we had some pretty severe storms here and they blew down a LOT of trees around, most of them uprooted. So, back to this morning, I was driving along, talking to my daugher, and looking at the tree damage. I was following a pickup truck who was a fair distance in front of me....I looked over at the root ball of a huge tree (I was wondering if there was a big hole in the ground where the tree roots had been) and when I looked back at the road, the pick up truck had slowed down and was about to turn right. After my eyes popped completely out of my head, I hit the breaks as hard as I could and plowed right into the back of the pick up truck. BAM! The pickup truck ended up on the side of the road in the ditch with his bumper bent in some and I ended up with the entire front end of my car torn off. Damage is very similar to this.

The radiator was busted, so it couldn't be driven. The State Trooper called a tow truck and it wasn't long before Mater showed up to take my poor hurt truck to the truck hospital. I rode with Mater to the truck hospital and was able to get Enterprise to come bring me a rent vehicle. They'll pick you up, you know.

The other driver was not injured, thank God! And neither was I. However, I was issued a ticket for following too closely. I wasn't following too closely until that guy slowed down to turn! Then I got close to him really fast! The trooper could have ticketed me for reckless operation but chose not to. Whew! What a day.