I've solved an infuriating mystery, and the outcome is satisfactory.
Yesterday, I noticed these nasty dents on the hood of my car. They didn't appear to be from gravel. It looked as though something heavy had fallen from above.
I racked my brain trying to figure out what could've made such an impact, and remembered that crews were installing fiber optic cables on my street on Friday.
When we arrived home from a hospital visit on Friday afternoon, the bucket truck was right above my car, which was parked on the street. The crews were using rollers to string up the cable parallel to the existing phone lines. They look like pulleys or roller skates -- brackets with springs and wheelies.
I suspected that one of them must have fallen off the line and hit the car.
Luckily, nosy me had asked the crews on Friday what they were installing and for what company. The traffic control lady said it was for high-definition telephone. Ohhhkay, but I got enough info to satisfy me.
Tuesday, I made a strategic phone call to the telecom company and asked which outfit was contracted to install the lines. Before long, someone from that contracting company phoned me and I told my story.
The man said he was "99% sure" that it was their equipment that damaged my car, but he wanted to see the vehicle just to be sure.
This morning, the guy and his fixer came out to my house and looked at the big dents. He concluded right away that it was one of their rollers. Just from the size and impact, he could tell.
They've offered to pay for the whole cost of repairs at a shop of my choice.
Kudos to the cable installer for being so up-front about all this.
Today marks a weird spot on the calendar for me. It’s one of those landmarks that really doesn’t mean anything, other than to illustrate the weirdness of time and how we feel it. As of today, my son Gordon has been without his mother longer than he was with her. The length of time Amanda has been gone is now longer than the length of time we were a family of three. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long, but that dangblasted calendar tells me it’s almost three years. I have not said a word about it to G, but tonight, for the first time in a long time, he pulled out the Missing Mummy book for bedtime. Today was my last day in broadcasting for a while, as far as I can tell. I spent the past five years as Program Director at Newstalk 1290 CJBK in London, Ontario. And in recent years, I was also the noon-hour show host, afternoon news anchor, a commercial voice guy, TV news promo voice guy, and more. Also in the past five years, I’ve bought a house, endured renovation
Good for them for being up front. Here in SW Ontario a couple of weeks ago we had strong hail, with significant damage to cars. Some repairs have been up to $6K. Steel hoods can be repaired because stamped steel tends to want to return to its original stamped shape but aluminum ones do not. In these cases, hoods are replaced. In exposed locations the dint is messaged from the back and pushed out--in other cases a tab is hot glued to the dint and a slide puller pulls out the dint--fixing without the need to paint. Some roofs have had 300 dints which have to be fixed individually. Specialists have been called into body shops to do the work, and it is estimated that there is another 5-6 weeks backlog.
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