J didn't sleep well last night, and must have been pretty fatigued this morning when she knocked a jar of Trader Joe's Cacciatore Simmer Sauce from the upper cabinets while reaching for something else. The glass jar hit the countertop, shattered, and the sticky red contents mixed with shards of glass flew all over the kitchen. It was on J's clothes, on the counter, on the floor (that I has just cleaned), the garbage can, the recycling was contaminated, it was on the freezer, the oven, the dishwasher, and the cabinets. We cleaned it up as best we could, but I was late for work and had to skip breakfast. I'm sure J felt bad about it, and it wasn't her fault; hopefully the stains will come out of her clothes. The funny thing is that at the very moment it fell, I was thinking about M-kitty: "it's sad that she's gone, but at least I won't be late for work any more cleaning up her last-minute messes."  Oops! At least we have a 3-day weekend to recover from recent events. 

Good news, J brought the car in today and it won't be THAT expensive to repair all the damage to the point where it will be as good as new. It will supposedly be ready tomorrow, which is shockingly fast work. I guess it wasn't that big of a deal. You hear about these fender-benders where the damage costs $2500 to fix, but we were lucky in that no glass or expensive lights were broken. As a treat for the car, we just filled it up with premium gas, and next weekend we'll get it washed.   

The bad news is that J's cellphone died. She's not having very good luck lately! We're going over to the AT&T/Cingular/whatever-the-hell-it's-called-now store after work. Maybe it just needs a new battery or SIM card, but they'll probably give her a hard sell on a fancy new phone. After that, we're going to walk all the way home because the weather is so nice today.  

Poor J, she is NOT having a good week! Jury duty, and now a fender bender in the brand new Mazda 3. She was driving south on Rockville Pike, when a young guy in a Scion swerved into her left-rear quarter panel, totally not her fault. She is very, very upset, and of course I wasn't much help as I freaked out a bit as well. Our pride and joy has been defiled! The damage is cosmetic, it seems the 17" aluminum alloy wheel took most of the blow. We can just get a new one if necessary. There were a few scratches around the wheel well, and after cleaning all the grease off with a degreaser, I applied about 5 coats of touch-up paint that I had fortunately purchased when we got the car. We might just not tell the insurance company and pay for the repairs out of pocket, otherwise they'll jack up the rates. The good news: nobody hurt, damage is minor and easily fixed. It's just a car. This is all Garrison Keillor's fault!!!! (hee hee)