(no subject)

We got the car out of impound, after a coupla hitches: One of the papers we needed to update the registry turned out at the last minute to require notarization, but that got resolved in about twenty minutes. Then when we got to the impound lot the car wouldn't start - the thief(ves) had run out the battery and the gas tank. But we borrowed the lot's gas can and got a jump from the yard man, and after the highway trip home the battery was all back to normal and I got to put in the last 1.3 hours of the workday.

Most of my stuff was no longer in the car ... and had been replaced by other stuff. At the impound lot counter they said to report which stuff wasn't mine, but they didn't give me any hint as to the procedure for that, and when I asked the yard guy he said, "They've already investigated that stuff as much as they're going to. This isn't CSI. Keep the crap or throw it out." qtrhorserider looked the stuff over and wasn't uninterested but my attention yesterday was elsewhere. At least the only really valuable things to me that went missing ought to be easily replacable.

Then this morning on the way to work I was rear-ended.

I'm not hurt (though my wife says I'll be sore tomorrow).

I was proceeding down the center lane of a three-lane street and there was a school bus stopped at a corner with the little red stop sign extended and flashing. The other traffic was just driving by, but I thought it was the law that you had to stop, so I did. That's when I got hit.

I spent the first five or ten minutes looking for my glasses. The other driver wasn't hurt either; or at least she didn't appear hurt and I neglected to ask. Cop showed up, took our information and gave us little information sheets to fill out for each other. Damage to my car doesn't make it undriveable, but the driver's side rear fender is in contact with the tire. I stayed down to about twenty-five mph for the remaining six blocks to my office. Before I went in I broke one of the auto thief's golf clubs trying to bend the fender away. I'd've tried it with my tire iron but the key won't turn in the trunk lock (I suppose the tire iron might not still be there, too).

The cop confirmed that you are indeed supposed to stop for a school bus like that, and he wrote a ticket to the other driver for following too close. But I guess, in retrospect, when it's raining and the temperature is in the thirties may be the wrong time to buck a trend.

e.r.

When I confessed about 10:00 to qtrhorserider that I'd experienced intermittent neck stiffness in the two hours since the accident, she persuaded me that a visit to the E.R. was smart. The doctor looked me over and said, in so many words, that there's nothing wrong with me except, under the curcumstances, perfectly normal whiplash. He prescribed me a pain reliever and a muscle relaxant, and everyone tells me I'll really want them by tomorrow (but the E.R. triage nurse said it'd start getting real bad around hour four and that hasn't happened). I hated to take the time because the most oppressive thing about everything that's gone on this week is the massive and implacable deviation from routine (I mean, I work at a university and it's the end of the semester, and two days till we're off for a week and a half - there are things to do. Plus tomorrow afternoon qtrhorserider and I're hitting the road to Chicago to visit scarfboy and his family for several days and, swell as that is, you don't get much more deviant from my routine than that. I do at this time still expect I'll update AKOTAS and In Thy Image on schedule). Still, it's better to know.

The trip to the E.R. did cost me the dean's annual holiday luncheon, but they brought me back cheesecake.

In Thy Image 8/16; Doctor Who/Star Trek: Voyager crossover

Back in the days when I regularly posted fanfiction to Usenet, this was my story that inspired more discourse on alt.drwho.creative than any other. It's set just after Voyager returns to the Alpha Quadrant in the series finale, so the Doctor is David Tennant's and the girl companion is the one who won't debut till next spring.

This story is a work derivative of intellectual properties owned by the BBC and by Paramount Pictures, but it infringes on no market of theirs, and no other profit has been made.

Chapters will be posted daily.

In Thy Image
Chapter 8

( In direct examination, prosecution counsel asked the EMH, 'Is it not true that your function has on occasion been manipulated by your crewmates for their own ends?' )