Beware the Ides of... April?

The Ides of March were bad for Julius Caesar, but it was the Ides of April that did me in. Tuesday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, to quote a famous children's book. Really it wasn't the worst possible day by any means, but it had two very bad events.

ONE -- When I tried to start up my 8 week old laptop that morning it was completely fried. I wouldn't start despite anything I did. I was feeling really sick the day before, so I spent a lot of time on it and had downloaded all sorts of pictures and worked on a lot of files. However, I didn't back anything up because I started feeling worse later in the day. So I turned my computer in to the service center thinking that everything was lost.
** The happy post script to this story is that I got my computer back today (Monday) with all of my files preserved. A miracle. **

TWO -- After spending a good deal of time working on the computer problem and running some other errands, my evening seemed to come quickly. Kenta and I met with the 12-18 year old men and women from our church to go to our nearby temple in Palmyra, NY. It's about a 35-45 minute drive. About halfway there we were waiting at a red light with another 10-15 cars when a car crashed into us at 45 mph. Kenta (who was driving) saw the car coming in the rear view mirror but there was nothing he could do other than hold the brake down. We were thrust forward into the car in front of us. The heavens must have been looking down at us because no one was injured at all. The car that hit us was totalled. The rear of my poor CR-V looked pretty bad. Fortunately, the car in front of us just had a dent on its back bumper. I honestly think that a lot of damage was avoided when the car hit my spare tire, so I highly recommend cars that carry the spare on the back.
The 2 thirteen year old girls that were with us were picked up by another car who left after we did, and got to the temple in plenty of time. After we were all done talking with the police and the insurance company, we drove the rest of the way to the temple without incident. So really it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened, but it was pretty bad.
**The post script to this accident is that we were not ticketed or found to be at fault (I don't know how we could have been at fault!) and the person who hit us was insured. So all $6800 in repairs will be covered. This does leave me without my car for 3 weeks, but we have an extra family car (Kenta's parents' car) so that I'm not left high and dry.**

Overall it really was a terrible day, but we still feel blessed that it wasn't worse. Pictures never do justice to this type of damage (sort of like trying to take a picture of an impressive bruise that you might have only to find an unimpressive slight discoloration when you look at the print -- so sad), but if you're interested, there are a couple pictures below. I didn't think to take a picture of the frame of the car (underneath), which was apparently pretty bad as well.