Money heals all wounds?

So on Thursday TD sent me the offer for my Lexus NX 200t and was pleasantly surprised how high my car’s valuation was!  Got well more than I expected but hey I’m not going to complain.  I’m still not happy with the service overall and may complain about it later but the money does make things a lot better.

All week I’ve been looking at what car to buy and I settled on a Lexus RX 350.  On road trip vacations I found the NX a bit small so moving to a mid sized SUV may make things more comfortable for us.  With that said uh I bought a 2018 Lexus RX 350 F-Sport 3 today.

Haha it looks huge next to Maggie’s CT 200h but then again it’s in the background too.  I don’t like black because it’s so easy to get dirty but when you buy used vehicles, sacrifices are necessary.  In terms of technology it has all the gizmos that I wanted (like a HUD, the NX spoiled me there) so yeah I’m happy and can’t wait to pick it up early next week! 😀

TD Insurance sucks

Dealing with TD so far has been a bit of a nightmare.  Despite requesting all communication occur through email, my agent insists on giving me a call instead and I think their phone system is designed to be frustrating to deal with.  When talking there seems to be a bit of a delay which is resulting in both her and I talking over each other constantly.  Next this lady says my rental cover is denied because I didn’t go through TD to book a car, yes I initially declined to get a rental but they said I could get a rental anytime so I did.  I declined before I found out my car was totaled and now that it is, I’ll need transportation for emergency purposes, I also read my policy, it doesn’t say I need to have TD book my rental just that they will reimburse me for reasonable charges.  I have a Hyundai Kona, its not like I rented a super car…

Next she keeps insisting on valuing my car as a base model when my Lexus NX was the F-Sport 3 fully loaded one.  I have a bunch of policies for my cars & real estate with TD & I think I’m going to move them if this is how I’m going to be treated, I don’t know if other companies will be better but they don’t deserve my business if this is how they treat me.

And my back still hurts so these jerks are making things more difficult.

Back pain

So I went to the doctor last week and she said I have mild whiplash and recommended I get some physio. She said she could prescribe some pain killers but I declined as I don’t really like taking pills, maybe I’m being stubborn lol.  On Saturday since I was all stiff I decided to take a hot bath, I haven’t taken one of those decades but it felt pretty good and relaxing but the day after my back hurt even more what the hell. It’s a good thing I work from home, though I’ll have to make sure I sit with a good posture to not aggravate it further.

We were suppose to go on a road trip starting Friday but that’s out, no way I can handle that now and I have to buy a new car ugh.  I hate the whole car shopping experience, hopefully TD pays me out quickly and I can get that done over with quickly.

Totaled

I put together these two clips from my dash cam and well you be the judge on what happened.

Also on the way towing my car to the shop, I spoke to TD insurance and they totaled my car.  Sigh saw enough in the photos not to even send an adjuster…  Anthony says the part that was bent in the fender was the problem.

He said that piece extends all the way to the front of the car, is one piece and very expensive to work on, let alone buy.  He’d have to cut it from the steel then weld a new piece on.  He also says there’s frame damage as part of the rear right has pushed into the trunk.  What a shame it drives straight but repairing is just too costly. 🙁

My back hurts today, there’s general muscle pain on the sides and a point that hurts in the middle of my back.  I’ll go see the doctor tomorrow, thankfully Brandon is alright but I’ll keep checking up on him just in case too.  Now what am I going to buy, at first thought I’m thinking about a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid but who knows what the future will hold.

Ouch!

I’m off Tuesday-Friday this week so I could spend some more time with Brandon and this morning we went to Silverdale.

Shooting is great bonding time and he enjoyed himself as well as starting to get better, just needs more practice.

On the way home though we definitely had a bit of a shock.

This was on the QEW just before Mississauga Rd, it was stop and go traffic and well the big truck couldn’t stop in time, hit the black van which then hit the back of my car.  The van slid into a white van in the passing lane (we were all in the middle) so it was a 4 car accident, ugh!  I feel lucky the black van was in between because if it wasn’t that truck would have hit me and the damage would have been a lot worse.

I called the police, two officers showed up an hour later traffic was terrible so not surprised it took so long.  They talked to us individually then told me I can drive home if I wanted to so I did.  The Lexus drives straight and felt fine (except for the error message about the parking sensors not working) so I hope it can be repaired though when I got home and opened the trunk I could see the rear was pushed in a bit, not sure if that’s bad or not.

Called insurance, gave them all the info and told them I have a dashcam with video if they wanted to see the accident but I think it’s pretty clear what happened so let’s see how long this one takes.

Happy birthday Brandon!

Brandon turned 14 years old on Saturday and my god where does the time go…  It feels like a split second, first he’s a baby and now he’s growing into a man.  Now that he’s older we have smaller parties and with a pool, that means it’s a default pool party so he had some friends over.

Ahh Brandon he’s always the happiest kid and I’m so lucky to have him as my son.  Thanks for being a great person Brandon, you have no idea how much joy you give mom and dad. 🙂

Crowdstrike eh

Well this was fun, a Crowdstrike update from the IT security company took down a lot of companies today (mine included) and this should clearly demonstrate the fragility of the systems that we depend on. Some airports, airlines, hospitals, 911 services & more were down which is definitely causing havoc around the world.  Glad I WFH and the worst thing that happened to me was that some people were offline part of the day.  Maggie’s company is still in the dark and I suspect some people at Crowdstrike are going to be let go due to this.

July 4th fireworks from here?

On Friday I took Brandon for a walk on a trail on lake Ontario and we could see Americans celebrating the July 4th (on the 5th) holiday with fireworks!

The video was shot on my cell phone through my BNVD 1431s and it was very cool to see, we would have stayed longer to watch but the mosquitoes were out in force so that cut our walk short.

Like old times

As Brandon grows up we’re spending less and less time together but yesterday was a really nice day.  The boy and I (Maggie had to work) went to Edward Gardens to join Mike to take pictures of the bugs and it I had such a great time.  It felt like when he was younger and we’d walk through parks, I really enjoyed spending that time with him.

I know this quality time will be fewer and far between moving forward so I’ll take what I can get.

Working hard!

Yesterday afternoon I took Brandon to his BJJ grading and boy did they work the kids who were trying to get their next belt hard!  Brandon’s always sweaty but he was drenched after yesterday’s session and I’m proud to say he earned his grey/black belt.  Last grey belt, hopefully he can get a yellow before he turns 15 and needs to go into the adult belt system.

It’s great exercise and as always I’m very proud of my boy, well done Brandon!