Can we restart 2012? I know it's only been 6 days, but they've all been bad days so far; and I'd really like a mulligan. The good news is my sinus infection has really cleared up nicely. The bad news started yesterday when I was driving my wife to the gym to pick up her car, and then we were both heading our separate ways to work. Unfortunately, I got pulled over for failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk (woman ran in front of me after initially walking away from the crosswalk and then doubling back, and even then I was almost through the crosswalk on the far right lane when she just entered it on the far left lane of a 5 lane street). At this point I'm expecting a citation for failure to yield and a stern warning from the cop. This is not what I get. Instead, when the officer runs my DL, he sees something that I had no idea he would see. I'm driving while suspended. He comes back to my window, asks for my keys, and asks me what the last thing is I was arrested for. Not, have you ever been arrested, or were you aware that your license was suspended, or anything like that, just "What's the last thing you were arrested for." Now, I've never been arrested, my criminal record is completely clean, and I have one ticket in the past 5 years - for driving too fast for conditions. And while the officer was a prick the entire time, and failed to provide me with any accurate information throughout the morning, my issue isn't really with him.
My issue is with the state. Back in July or August or whenever, I was in a car accident. Minor little fender-bender on the freeway, I rear-ended the guy in front of me when he slammed on his brakes in the rain and I did the same, but mine didn't stop me before the back of his car did. It took me some time to be able to afford to pay the ticket, which I never had any intention of fighting or appealing, because I really did rear-end the guy in front of me. So, when I could afford to pay the ticket, which was about a month after its original due date, I went to the state's official website for paying traffic infractions, looked up my case number, and paid the total amount that the state informed me I owed. Herein lies the problem. The state didn't tell me that there was a late fee of $52.00. Apparently their excuse is that it can take up to 90 days for the totals to be updated on the website, and I should have called them to pay the ticket instead. Why even have a website if you know it's not going to be accurate outside of a 90 day window, and why in the hell would you represent that website as being an officially recognized way of paying a ticket, the same as calling in, on the ticket itself, if it's not true? Regardless, $52 late fee that I wasn't notified of didn't get paid when I paid my ticket (obviously), and my license was suspended - something else I was never notified of. If I'd been notified, I'd've corrected the issue immediately, not driven around with a suspended license for 3 months.
So yeah, arrested, and because my wife can't drive my car (doesn't drive a stick shift), car impounded. I'm taken to the police station, processed, and released; and thus begins my 6 hour task of getting my car out of impound. According to the arresting officer, all I have to do is get my license taken care of and go pick up the car. According to the impound papers he filed with the impound company (which, by the way, has an out of date towing license and is no longer authorized to tow vehicles for the PD), I have to get a separate release form from the court before I can get the car out of impound. So we go back to the courthouse that we've just left, where I paid my $52 late fee, and request a release form. They've never heard of this release form. It takes them about 30 minutes of debating and researching and then come back with a form, but I need a copy of my vehicle registration in order to prove that I own the car (even though the impound paperwork states that I own the car and they require that form as well). So, it's back to the impound lot to pick up my registration from my car, then back to the courthouse to get the form, then back to the impound lot to get the car, all of this after a lovely hour spent at the DOL getting my license reinstated and reissued, for a grand total of $362.00 spent because the state failed to notify me that either a) I owed them a $52 late fee or b) my license had been suspended. Plus, I now get to go to court, when I get my court summons and find out what I'm actually being charged with, with the possibility of a criminal record for failing to pay a fucking fee. Oh, plus an "investigation" into my failure to yield to a pedestrian and an "investigation" into my driving without insurance because, of course, you can't have insurance if your license has been suspended.
So yeah, yesterday was a bad day, but what the hell, one bad day isn't enough to really piss me off (though I am pissed off at the state for failing to notify me of said fee). No, that takes multiple bad days. Like today, because while dealing with all of the aforementioned bullshit yesterday, I also had my doctor's office calling me back multiple times to get me to schedule an appointment to follow up on some lab results. So today, bright and early, I drive to my doctor's office in the bumfuck back end of Redmond where he tells me that he's gotten the results of my fasting blood draw and my Hemoglobin A1C and sure enough - I'm officially a type 2 diabetic. Luckily, my cholesterol, which they normally have to worry about in conjunction with type 2 diabetics, is amazingly good. Like, astronauts should envy my cholesterol levels, so no statins for me; but I do get to take metFORMIN and lisinopril, and check my blood glucose levels twice a day for the foreseeable future. However, I'm already eating a mostly diabetic-friendly diet (need to switch to splenda instead of sugar for my coffee, or hell, drink it black), and I'm already working out and losing weight, I just need to continue that trend and according to my doctor, this should go away.
tl/dr: Sinus infection Tuesday, arrested Thursday, Diabetic on Friday. Happy fucking 2012, Charlie Brown.