I hurt my car!

On Wed. Judy and I went around to see ten cottages that are on the tax sale list. The starting bid ranged from $1100 to $2600.  Some of them my GPS “Brunhilda” could not find, and some of them were really awful!  I found four that looked OK.  I love the cottages that have knotty pine paneling!  It took 11 hours of driving to get to them all, so we were bushed when we got back.

When I was backing out of a long driveway at one of the cottages, a big  mean tree stepped out behind me!  I crunched the tail light and scraped up the side for about 2′!   Oh me oh my, I feel so bad, and so stupid!!

I see I can get a replacement tail light on Amazon for around $115, and most of the scrapes are very superficial.  Still…..!!!!!!

In the meantime I hit another dead end on getting that health insurance reimbursement from Ecuador.  A friend in Ecuador called the insurance company to see if they would do a wire transfer to my bank.  Welcome to Ecuador, they acted like they’d never heard of such a thing!  So I’m stuck with trying to get someone to cash the check.  My next step is to take the check back to my bank’s branch in Escanaba, the guy there said as a last resort they could take the check and do something-or-other that would take 4-6 weeks, and MAYBE get the money.  And then if that doesn’t work, I will find a Citibank on the way home in Oct. and see if I open an account there, if they’ll take the check as a deposit.  (It is written on Citibank but they told me on the phone they would not cash it).

I’m thinking I may never get that $2500, not without actually going to Ecuador, which would eat up half the money and require me renewing my passport, etc. I went ahead and gave up on the cottage in Harrison I’d put the offer on. And with that in mind, I think I will either not bid on any of those cottages, or maybe put in an extremely low-ball bid on the cheapest one.  There will be more cottages on next year’s tax sale, and maybe I’ll be in better shape financially, or at least I’ll know for sure by then what my financial situation is.  Maybe I’m not “meant” to get a cottage this year, if ever.

I’m heading back up to Little Bay de Noc to meet a friend on Aug. 5. I’m so glad it has cooled down, it’s been really hot even in the U.P.   But now we have the other extreme, the forecast lows are 48-50 degrees, brrrrrr!  It’s always something, isn’t it?!