Our Return to South Florida
While it’s fresh in my mind, I’m going to write about our first day back from Hastings. I should fill you in that we actually live in Fort Lauderdale, but have a place, in Hastings that I’ll tell you about another time. We bought it 3 years ago with the intention of relocating and retiring there. Still our dream, but the economy has screwed us up. We do, however, drive up every other weekend, a four hour drive, but well worth the peace.
We are so done with South Florida and this is what awaited us when we returned.
Not even an hour after our arrival home, Mike received a voice mail. For the 3rd time in two months, and actually the 2nd time in two weeks, his company truck had been broken into. Just to clarify, it’s not “his” company truck, but the truck owned by the company he works for. The problem is that in this wonderful city we live in, associations rule the city. You are not allowed to park a vehicle with lettering on it in your driveway. The association also tell you when you need to clean your roof, or driveway or house. They even tell you to remove plants that they don’t like and they do all this for an astronomical fee. That’s another story in itself. So, anyway, Mike parks his truck in a parking lot on a main road in a lighted area. The braizen thieves break the back window of the truck, climb through and hand out their take. Being a air conditioning and appliance tech the truck is supplying the low-lives with multiple Freon tanks, guages and motors. Each time there’s a break-in Mike has to file a police report which entails waiting an hour for the police to show up and then filing the report. This takes a half hour to an hour depending on the officer and thorough he chooses to be. Of course, this is also on Mike’s time, not the company’s. The police department has no leads and no idea who might be doing these break-ins, but the hassle is no longer worth it and Mike will now have to leave the truck at the shop which is a half hour away, rather than five minutes from our house. Thank you, low-lives.
The following day I received 4 pieces of mail. The first of these was actually an $8.00 ticket for a toll violation in New York. Our son, Jason, just moved up to Albany and had his car shipped there. I called Jason and informed him about the ticket to which he replied that he didn’t run any tolls. A little while later he called me back. He had checked the date of the violation and realized it was the day the car was shipped. He hadn’t driven the car that day. As it turns out, the driver who hauled Jason’s car on an eighteen wheeler, did not want to drive the truck into New York City where we had scheduled the drop off. The truck driver drove Jason’s car into the city and blew the toll. Nice!!!
The second piece of mail was a letter that I received was from an attorney. He wanted to “help” me retrieve unclaimed property that the State of Florida has in it’s possession. And, he wanted a mere $200 to do this. The property that FL has now taken over is stock in Ashland Oil. My parents had given my ex and I stock when we got married and since our divorce in 1999 I hadn’t been able to cash the checks because they were in both our names. The checks were a whopping $21 a quarter so I ignored them. Not a good idea. Ultimately, the stock was turned over to the state as unclaimed property. Now this lawyer wants to cash in on getting me the money owed to me for the stocks. I suppose a lot of people would have signed the documents and allowed this lawyer to file for what is owed them, but $200 is $200. I threw out the letter and then proceeded to www.fltreasurehunt.org where you can search for unclaimed property in your name. Lo and behold, I found four items that I could claim. I printed the forms, signed where necessary, attached a copy of my license and mailed everything certified to the address specified. Within 60 days, I should have a check. I’m pretty sure that in this economy everyone would rather have every penny they own in their pockets and with a little effort I saved $200.
The final two pieces of mail were the largest cause of aggravation. Not because I couldn’t handle it, but because someone else should have handled it and now it wound up in my lap (again.) The story: Our daughter, Tara was in a car accident. (I’ll detail that story in another post.) The only thing that pertains to this story is that Tara’s girlfriend was driving her father’s company truck and is well insured. I point that out because the incredible state of Florida is a “no fault” state regarding auto insurance and although most drivers carry PIP (personal injury protection), it only covers $10,000. In Tara’s case the bills were to be much higher, but in this case with the insurance coverage that the driver’s father’s company carries the insurance company will be paying the bills. Now being that the insurance company will be paying all bills they gave us a claim number and instructions to submit the claim number for every medical facility, doctor and service. These instructions were reiterated to Tara’s biological mother along with the claim number on numerous occasions, but because of the nature of the “beast,” (also to be embellished upon in another post) she seems to conveniently give them Mike’s insurance info everytime. Not sure I’ve met anyone more dense. Subsequently, upon receipt of every bill I have to call, explain the situation and give them the claim number. I do have to comment though that when we received a $36,000 hospital bill, it was a phone call that I took great pleasure in making!
Well, that was day one of what would turn out to be a chain of events yet to follow. I’m sure “Murphy” has taken up residence with us, hopefully not for too long. It seems “anything that can go wrong will.” Such is life!!! More to follow…
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