August 25, 2003 - 9:44 a.m.
Insurance shopping. Blech.
Numbers are not my friends. I hate budgeting, balancing my checkbook, and comparing insurance rates. Top that with the nagging suspicion that I'm being fleeced and it all makes for quite an unpleasant pastime. AAA, which is supposed to cut members like me a break on rates and discounts, so far has produced the highest cost. AllState generated a ridiculously low quote, but that's because they value my new house at less than half of what all the other agencies do. We've been with Nationwide for years but they have some unwritten rule about never switching agents so I have to go through the guy we signed on our auto policy with in Chesterfield. And I've talked with a couple others who have never bothered to call back...
That said, if anyone out there has a company they really like, let me know.
We sat back this weekend and did as little as possible. I went to the library Saturday morning, seeking out more Sherlock Holmes but the Herndon Fortnightly appears to be a strictly Doyle-free zone. The damned detective has a hold of my imagination, however. I milled around the shelf of new arrivals and picked up a copy of Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper and read over half of it after the boys went to bed that night. I could not put it down. And I didn't even have nightmares. Then, sometime last night I stopped and asked myself what the hell I was reading this stuff for... Although the theories are highly interesting, the rest is rather gross. Perhaps I'm just returning to my normal, freaky self - as opposed to "freaky with bonus morbidity." I may check the Reston library this afternoon for The Hound of the Baskervilles or something like that...
