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...you have no idea of how hard I just had to struggle to stop myself from making a joke about LGBTQ* insurance policies and reparative therapy for them.

Since Susan's involved, it should be titled "First Contact".

I got the results of the biopsy of the sore on my right ear. It's not a basal cell carcinoma. No cancer! Turns out it's a "Picker's Nodule," or prurigo nodularis, which I'd never heard of. They're hard as hell to cure, supposedly. All I know is that it still hurts to lie on.

I'm having trouble getting the salt and/or sugar right on my rice. The last two bowls of rice have been less than optimal. [edit to add] But I got the tea/sugar ratio exactly right on the ice tea. So there is that. [/edit]

Plenty of reason for Diane to be there. She was likely also trying to build up the courage to go into the mall, she might have assumed Susan was already in there waiting, hence the surprised look on her face. She gets to see that Susan was also very nervous about meeting and it might be a good icebreaker for them.

Seconded! Get better soon!

Eek! Glad it wasn't a heart attack, but sorry it happened at all. As if there wasn't enough medical drama in your life!

Bleah. Yesterday, I was going home at lunchtime, and got rear-ended at a stop sign. The corner in question is at a rather sharp angle to a larger road, which also curves, and due to trees and creekside weeds, the view to the left is not great. You have to stop at the sign and then pull forward slowly, and often doing so reveals one or more cars coming from the left, previously hidden in the curve. Such was the case, so I came to a stop again, only to be thunked into by the young woman behind me, who apparently assumed I would keep moving forward and looked away (I heard her saying as much to the cop afterwards). I had a trailer hitch installed on my car specifically so I could put a bike rack on it, because when I'd tried a bike rack that attached to my trunk, it left small dents and scratched the paint. Monday, I took my bike in to REI for a general check-up and tune-up (turned out the tires were old enough to need replacing). The bike rack was still on my car in anticipation of taking the bike home Friday night. Her impact seems to have hit the upright post of the bike rack first, bending it forward -- and into the top of my trunk, denting it and scratching the paint -- then impacting the left side of my bumper as forward momentum met a single almost-central point. There's now a bit of a gap between the top of the bumper on the left side of the car and whatever you call the piece above it. The bike rack is also tilted forward, although it did rebound partway so the trunk is not wedged shut by it. No one was hurt, other than feeling a bit like I did the one time we tried to ride all the roller coasters at Great America in one day. All better today. I had to get my insurance card off of my email over the nearby WalMart's WiFi. Cop took our info, gave us forms to send in, and I called my insurance. I'll have to take the car somewhere to find out how much the damage will be to fix; not sure if slamming into a tow-hitch bar from behind could result in structural damage where the thing is attached underneath, but I'll let someone else look and see. Not sure how big a deal the bike rack being angled forward 20-30° is, as the knob to allow it to swing back when you need to open the trunk still works, but before I could open it without doing that and now I won't be able to. Gotta put the estimated damages in the accident report form, as well as giving the info to the insurance company. I'll have to take a better look at it later, make sure things like the pin to attach it to the tow bar aren't also bent or cracked. Poor car. This is the second time she's been rear-ended, the first being when I stopped when railroad gates started coming down in front of me and the lady behind me didn't notice. Definitely could have been much worse. Oh, and I got a voicemail message from the driver's father ;and owner of the car she was in) last night, saying she came home with a ticket, told him she'd hit my bike rack, and he hoped it wasn't damaged, she wasn't very specific....