Tomorrow will be the first day of Collin's new day care. Our former day care was Amazing. I would highly recomend Tinker Tots day care. The only problem for us is that it's Extremely far from our home. I did some figuring and we were driving over 25 miles each day just to get Collin to and from day care. That's more than a gallon a day. And so we decided to look for something a little closer, and more convenient. We discovered there was an opening at The University of Montana's ASUM Childcare center on campus, and so starting tomorrow our commute will go from around 30 extra minutes to zero. As you can probably imagine, i am pretty excited. Tomorrow morning Collin, Jessica and I are going to ride the bus to work. This will make our reliance on a moter vehicle limited to errands and groceries and the like.
We are very sad to be leaving Miranda and Justin at Tinker Tots, but after the car accident and realizing how poor a job missoula does to take care of the roads in the south hills, we decided it was time for a change.twitter wordpress
On the morning of December 29th, 2008 I slid from my lane into the lane of oncoming traffic. I sideswiped a truck, and the collision sent us both into the ditch. You might have heard about a road closure on Hillview....
Needless to say the roads were unbelievably slippery, i will only briefly mention this once: the city of missoula does an unacceptable job at maintaining the city streets. I was issued a ticket for Careless Driving, and told to see judge Louden.
When the first tow truck arrived he began carefully positioning himself to extract the Chevy 1500 Silvarado from the ditch, and he slid off the road and into the snowbank leaving this enormous truck stuck in the ditch. Then Reds Towing made it to the scene with a smaller, but still capable, and as he was carefully position himself, he too slid off the road into the ditch. It was a sight to behold.
One of the police officers radioed to dispatch and requested, for the third time, that a sanding truck come up to lay down some traction, by this time there were passers by who were getting stuck as they slowed/stopped to avoid and gawk at the absurdity of the situation (a bresnan truck had to put on chains to make it out of there). The dispatcher asked him to go and block off the road, he had to admit to her that he too was unable to safely navigate the street and that he too was stuck.
Recap: 2 damaged vehicles + 2 tow trucks + 1 Police Cruiser + other traffic getting stuck = a big mess.
finally the sanding truck made it up there, more police showed up to close the road, and 2 more tow trucks came to try and salvage this situation. after the street was sanded and declared to be "safe" the 3rd and 4th tow trucks got to work pulling us out first and then the other tow trucks and finally the Chevy truck.
The estimated damage on our car was about $5,000 and of course insurance will help out with that. The next morning while we were driving Collin daycare we followed the sand truck up the hill. 24 hours earlier that sand would have saved me a thousand bucks and a lot of time wasted dealing with the court.
I appeared before the judge on Tuesday December 30th and plead not guilty. I was given a Scheduling Order, and sent on my way. I then stopped at the office of the City Attorney, where i met with a city prosecutor. I explained the situation and said that i was driving in the same manor as the Police Officer and the 2 tow truck drivers, and if i deserved a ticket than they did as well. They simply got lucky and when they slid off the road they didn't hit anyone. She agreed that the road conditions were extreme and had they been sanded the incident would have been avoided.
The legal repreve won't pay the deductible for the repairs, it probably won't even encourage the city to take a more proactive stance on road maintenance, but at least it helps with the piece of mind.
It has been a long time since i've written anything here. and i have to admit a Lot has happened in my life.
For the past several months we have basically dedicated all of our time to designing and creating a new web presence for The University of Montana. You can go there and use the comments boxes on each page to tell us what you think. I have to say i think this is one of the best things we did in the process of redesigning the site. At the university we serve a very diverse demographic, practically every age group, men and woman, those currently attending UM, Those considering it and all the parents in between. We have Alums coming to the site looking for things to do and ways to help out their Alma Mater. I will say that the site was largely designed by committee, which posed it's problems but all and all it turned out ok, and everyone, well almost, who has a stake in the homepage has their link.
Give us some feedback if you like, good or bad, please though, if you think it sucks tell us a) why, and b) and what you would do to fix it. This process has given us all pretty thick skin.
Aside from a new home page we also implemented a Content Management System, check out the alumni site, and see Gordy's post about the launches. The CMS will and already has provided us with a way to 1) allow non technical users to quickly create and update web content, with no expensive software, and 2) start to create an overall branding for the university.
In personal news, the wife and i just bought a new car, its a Chevy Malibu LS, coolest features:
- 25 mpg in town, 35 highway
- CD player (yes we have finally joined the rest of the world)
- enormous trunk, with folding rear seats.
- did i mention 25 mpg in town, 35 highway?
We will be in Seattle for Thanksgiving and we are excited to get it out on the road and see what it can do.
