Wayward Pines & Bye-Bye Merc Retro

Whenever we spend time with our daughter, we find out about new TV shows. Most recently, Megan told us about Wayward Pines. We’ve now watched three episodes and are hooked. The premise, from IMDB, sounds fairly simple and straightforward: 

An FBI agent, played by Matt Dillon, is searching for two missing FBI agents. As the result of a car accident, he ends up in Wayward Pines, Idaho, and quickly discovers he may not ever get alive.

By episode three, it’s obvious that Wayward Pines is not your usual reality. But is it the land of the dead, as in Lost? Is it some bizarre sociological experiment perpetrated by one the government spook agencies? Is it the result of some weird time twist? Right now, any of these or something else entirely, seems plausible.

So, here’s the real world weirdness. After watching episode three, Rob went back to his computer to continue researching the prices for our new auto insurance policies. He noticed on the policy that Progressive emailed a note that included an at fault accident on June 2, 2014.

The only time we have filed a claim on either of our cars is after tropical storm Isaac, in 21012 when our neighborhood was so inundated that on my way home from the gym, my Mazda simply died. I finally managed to get the engine to turn over and coasted into our driveway. The engine was shot and was eventually replaced with a much newer engine that had only 4,000 miles on it. I had to pay the $1,000 deductible and the insurance company paid the rest.

So Rob went online with an employee from the insurance company and asked for details about this alleged June 2, 2014 accident that neither of us could recall, where we were at fault. The accident had supposedly been reported through LexisNexis, a company we’d never heard of.

I poked around on that website for awhile and began to feel really creeped out – like Wayward Pines had followed us out of TV land and into the real world. In Wayward Pines, no one can speak freely, your every word is monitored; this LexisNexis outfit feels like that, a Big Brother company.  While I was thinking this, Rob called out from his office: “It feels like we’re in Wayward Pines. In an alternate reality.”

This was occurring right before and right after Mercury went direct at 6:33 p.m. this evening.  The culprit? Well, there were several. The first was a typo. The insurance report should have read: not at fault. The second was just plain weird. The insurance company employee reported that the accident had happened to our daughter’s car, but no driver was present. No driver? How does that work? As he drilled down deeper, he uncovered the truth: the accident involved a dog. No, the dog was not driving.

On June 2, 2014, our daughter’s dog, Nika, was hit by a driver in Orlando, who then turned around and took her to small claims court for the damage to his car.

The only “claim” Megan had made was to call Progressive to find out if her car insurance would cover the damage to the driver’s car. It got recorded as an accident with no driver in the car, for which we were at fault. In the end, it cost $1200 in vet’s bills and an additional small claims court price of $900 to the guy who hit Nika.

But by the time Mercury had gone direct and the typo and actual facts had been uncovered, we saved nearly $700 in car insurance – and realized we weren’t living in Wayward Pines, but were just experiencing the tail end of a Mercury retrograde that began on May 19 this year, and ended tonight, June 11.

Then we went out to dinner to celebrate the end of the retrograde!