I was in a little fender bender this morning on my way to work. No one was hurt, but I spent most of the day sorting things out. I was westbound on Eastern and the lady who hit me was trying to turn left (eastbound) from Heward, and she didn't look to her left as she made her turn. I braked and had come to a stop when she hit the front passenger-side corner of my car. She had just started from her stop sign, so wasn't going very fast (maybe 15km/h). She was very apologetic and agreed it was her fault, and so we exchanged insurance info. Both cars were still drivable.

This is the first time I've been involved in an accident, and was really impressed by the efficiency of the collision reporting and insurance process.

First I drove over to the Toronto West collision reporting centre near the QEW and Islington. I was in-and-out of there in about thirty minutes. The collision reporting centres are for accidents where no-one is hurt (amongst other things) and the main purpose is to have the police report for insurance. (It saves having the police show up at every little fender bender). They then sent the report automatically to my insurance company.

Drove to work, and called my insurance company. They took the details, and gave me contacts to get an estimate, and for a rental while the car is being repaired. Because the other driver is at fault, my deductible is waived.

The body shop already had my file (from the insurance company) when I showed up to get the estimate. (They send it direct to the insurance company).

I am going to take the car to the BMW dealership-recommended body shop, which unfortunately is up at Bayview and Steeles. I called the car rental company and they also had my file from the insurance company. I qualify for a luxury rental (because I'm insuring a BMW), and the insurance company pays the car rental company directly.

Later in the day my insurance broker called to see if I was okay.

Everyone that I dealt with today was very courteous and professional. I was thinking of switching my car insurance to combine it with my house insurance; but after the great customer service I think I will stay with my current insurer (Aviva).

...

Today is Hallowe'en and it's the first time I've lived in a house since I moved out from my parents to go to university. Heather and I weren't sure how many kids to expect, and planned for 100. The first 36 got full-sized chocolate bars, and the rest were snack-sized chips. We ended up having 53 kids throughout the evening, the busiest time was around 7pm. Met a lot of the neighbours who were taking their kids around. (Leslieville is really friendly!)

Eleven months and 984 pages later, I finally finished reading The Brothers Karamazov. It was okay, I preferred Anna Karenin (I know it's a different author, but they're both Russian classics). Now I can get on with my backlog of books to read -- next is a Douglas Adams book that JP lent to me.

Doaner got Leaf tickets to yesterday's game, and called me around 3pm to see if I was free. Of course before I accepted I asked if they were box seats. They weren't, but I went anyways. The seats were actually pretty good, thirteen rows up behind the Leaf bench. But we had to get out of the seats and line up to buy beer, and use the same washrooms as everyone else. (Although the washrooms are common for box seats at the ACC -- it's at the Skydome that there's a washroom in each box). The Leafs won, and we spent most of the game heckling McCabe. I think he was a minus-2 in a 4-2 win. (I was being a box-seat-snob just to bug Doaner).

We came back home after the game (Heather was wrapping up working on her disseration for the night, and was giving her chapter a final edit). We ordered pizza and played a game of Scrabble. Doaner won 430-422 with a 7-letter word on his last turn.

We played a double-header on Sunday Ultimate. The weather was terrible yet again -- there was actually a wind warning! I've never heard of a wind warning before that. My legs were tired after the game, but by dinner I was okay.