It's not as much fun to pick up the pieces

[cyrano]

Just as I was sitting down to write this, I got a call from home. The day after I left Idaho, the family dog had a stroke. Apparently he'd had the good manners to wait for me.
I've pretty much failed to get the house cleaned like I said I would--I managed to get to work and get home afterwards, but I'm not much on the activeness thing past that. Not sleepy. Just hot and full of not wanting to move or do anything at all. Not looking forward to October, at this rate. q:
And today I got mail from the superior court of California. I can pay the bail on the ticket of $275 or I can pay $25 more and go to traffic school (where, according to the paperwork, they will collect an additional fee--anybody got an idea how much 'additional'?). The clerk I talked to recommended that if I wanted to do traffic school I not talk to the judge, since s/he might not let me go. (I'm not really contesting it, just claiming mitigating circumstances. I was in the HOV lane at 8:55, five minutes early.) I feel especially unclued in how to appropriately deal with this--anybody with experience in getting tickets want to have lunch and discuss this?

Comments

[wilson-lizard.livejournal.com]

*hugs* sorry about your puppy, dear...

I hope you beat the ticket, too!

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, bummer about the dog. Sometimes, those kinds of things are more stressful than losing people-friends.

One thing to consider about traffic school is that it keeps the ticket from being reported to your insurance company, so if you have a clean record (and you surely do), it'll save you money by keeping you in the good driver discounts. Traffic School is _awful_ - it's like a day of being in high school all over again - but it does save you money.

The Administrative Fee was $24 in March of 2001. I can't find the additional records, but I think the class fee was something in the $10-$30 range. There's no brainwork required - I don't even think there was a test, but if there was, it was of the "True/False You should drive faster in the rain because you get better traction" difficulty level.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Given that I'm already tossing $275 onto this unfortunate event, an extra $40-50 doesn't seem like too much to keep my driving record clean.

[miss-friday.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this is the case in the Bay Area, but traffic school down here can be done online at anytime without leaving your house. Pretty spiff.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Ooo. URL?

[miss-friday.livejournal.com]

My friend Paul discovered this neato thing. He got ticketed in West Hollywood, and the police or his insurance company gave him a list of approved traffic schools. Some were online. I'll ask him about it.

[miss-friday.livejournal.com]

Update on online traffic school: Paul (in a really odd looking message that I hope didn't have a virus in it) tells me you should get a list of approved traffic schools from the court, if you don't already have one. He used www.hometrafficschool.com and said it took about 4 hours. He also said the AAA runs an online traffic school.