10 posts tagged “car”
Dropped eldest off at preschool this morning.
Headed off to the Y with youngest.
It's one exit down the freeway.
While turning from the surface street onto the on-ramp, I was met with a vehicle reversing up the on-ramp toward me.
Guy had mistaken the clearly marked freeway on-ramp with the driveway to a business park, I guess.
He backed up all the way out of the on-ramp, backed through the surface street (against flow of traffic) and then turned into his desired destination.
Seriously people... it's called, "Yeah, I screwed up, lemme get off at the next exit and circle around to come back."
After the Y, youngest and I stopped off at the insurance agent office to get our policies transfered in from out of state.
So, that urban legend about drivers in the American South, while on the freeway, putting their vehicles in reverse to go back to an off-ramp that they've missed?
I saw it yesterday.
I've also seen vehicles on the freeway merging, I use the term loosely, come to a complete stop on the on-ramp as opposed to feathering into traffic.
Today, while in a left turn lane at a signal light, red for turns / green for through traffic, a truck pulled up next to me in the through lane and stopped for the light cycle.
Me?
I now get cold sweats at visions of approaching vehicles crossing double-yellow lane markers coming toward me on one-lane roads.
To cope?
Samuel Adams has a fresh seasonal out. Winter Lager. 5.8% A.B.V. Dark wheat lager brewed with winter spices.
A traditional bock steeped in German heritage brewed with German Noble Hops called Tettnang-Tettnanger.
Also learned of the strongest beer in the world. Samuel Adams Utopias. Must try.
http://www.internetwines.com/rws28347.html
http://www.samueladams.com/world_of_beer.aspx
On the one side, there's having a beer for breakfast...
And either explaining it away (as it being a Saturday, ahem) or getting confrontational about the expressed, or anticipated expressed concern of others. It betrays that the user/abuser was looking for attention all along.
Then,
Well then there's the other side...
And you say, "What? It's Saturday? Cool, that means I can have several more as I don't have to drive eldest child to preschool today!" Meaning that the user/abuser wasn't anticipating any response at all and is simply pleased that the indulgence can, all responsibilities aside, be prolonged.
When dealing with depression, you don't need any filters.
That in mind, pass on the ciggies and go straight for the cigars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir
Survived another Grandparental visit.
All the contraband can now be unpacked from the garage.
Silver lining is that Grandparents make great babysitters.
As a result the wife and I had time to deal with officialdom.
We now have new state drivers licenses in hand (or back pocket as it were.)
They were hard won prizes.
Three different licensing stations we visited had lines out the door and no available parking...
The lines were just to get tickets... to then wait to be graced with an audience with an official at the counter.
Consulted map and drove 45 minutes North to a rural licensing station in another county.
Here we found where all the fat, jolly, hick sort of DMV officials I had always hoped to have process me resided.
It's been my previous experience when dealing with officialdom to get the emaciated, cranky, geriatric that's a stickler for the rules.
But not this time. No line. No need for all those fangled state-required documents that just get in the way.
You look like a nice feller. Pay your fee and sit over there for your photo. Have a nice day now ya'hear!
And it was just that easy.
Finding Purchase
I see I got this limp now
But don't remember where I got it from
Yeah I know I bought this pain somewhere last night
But not who it was put it up for sale
Some few things I remember so clear
I didn't drive a car there
I didn't trust I could steer it home
There was tall whiskey in my glass alright
And now there's a poundin' in my head
An awful aching pounding
If events are remembered rightly
Last night there was a pounding in my bed
I remember a girl, she danced home with me
But not where she come from or gone to
Yeah, I know she said her name
And now I wish I'd wrote it down somewhere
My memory worked better when that whiskey was still full
Now it's empty and she's gone and I'm left with this aching here
Last night there was a real good pounding
But now it's in my head.
I remember a girl that danced home with me
But not where she came from or gone to.
I got me a real good limp now
and an aching in my head.
I know I'm the one who bought it
But not who put it up for sale.
I know I must've paid for it
Because my wallet ain't got no bills
Today I had to play goalie/keeper to keep a vigorous attempt out of our credit score net.
Who was the other side on the financial pitch, you ask?
My bank.
My own frakking bank!
I pay all my bills, exclusively, with on-line bill pay.
Well, OK, not so "exclusively" really, there are vendors here and there, especially during the setup after a move that want to be paid johnny-on-the-spot, but aside from that, all the paper bills in the mail or received via on-line notification I pay using the bank on-line service.
It's free and saves me a mint on stamps each month.
Above and beyond that, I can track everything on-screen.
I've never been conscientious with entries in the old check register, so that's a major benefit for me.
I can't think of a time that there's ever been an issue with it.
It's secure, it's reliable, it's efficient, and I've been able to trust it.
Until today.
Just received a notification that my rent check payment was rejected.
The rent check that is due today/tomorrow.
The rent check that I now have no way of getting to the rental agent on time, either through a replacement via on-line billpay or through an envelope via postal service...
Unless, I find my box of physical paper checks that I use so rarely that I often misplace from neglect, load the two young'uns into the car (after youngest's nap, but before lunch), and drive over to a neighboring city, to the rental agent office, and physically deliver the check myself, today before 3pm when they close.
I'm offended not because of the rejection, but because it took the bank 8 days to tell me it was rejected.
If told on day one of the rejected status, I had loads of time to initiate a replacement payment, on time (to spare actually.)
The rejection occured because within minutes of initiating the payee and the first payment, I modified the address to include their suite number.
The bank couldn't have just modified my payment and sent it on its merry way?
Or told me that the modification neccessitated a cancellation of payment right away, since the error occured within minutes of initiation?
No.
Let's wait 8 days until we credit the funds back to tell him that the delivery failed due to address modification, leaving him absolutely no time to recover, even though he planned ahead and initiated payment 9 days before it was due.
Well, take that!
I made the save/stop.
The checkbook has been found, the payment written and I'm only killing time until youngest wakes to be on my way and get my result.
The customer will prevail.
Also, took much pleasure in pointing all of this out to a V.P. of on-line banking operations.
Cages will be rattled.
Changes in procedure will be initiated.
More importantly, our credit history / score will not be tarnished with a late payment notation.
Alrighty then.
The checklist upon arrival:
Me, male, thinning hair,
check.
The wife, already successful in new corporate office,
check.
Kids, two, female, aged 3 and 1,
check.
Dogs, two, female, boxers,
check.
Vehicles, two, one sedan, one pickup truck,
check.
A not insignificant, (read "crapload") of stuff inside various sized moving boxes, (seriously, you could fit a household of stuff in there)
check.
Only snafu was the rental agent and the cable guy not being able to connect with each other before we arrived.
First available makeup appointment was yesterday.
So we've actually been here for a full week before our TV had channels and my little rectangular metal box of a gateway to the rest of the cyber-world did anything aside from an impersonation of a 3 year old in timeout.
For now, I am now going to eat pizza, drink local beer, Yazoo "Dos Perros" Ale brewed downtown in a former motorworks factory, and smoke a victory cigar.
And yes, I got carded (out of state ID and all) by a sweet young thing while buying the beer at the local store.
Maybe the hair is not so thinning after all.
Later I will share anecdotes about the size and veracity of the local insectoid population and my legendary warrior prowess with the two-handed broad-swatter.
Leave to pick the wife up at the airport in 30 minutes.
The 8 month old is already cranky, having played with her older sister instead of napping all afternoon.
And now, now she gets to ride in her car-seat for an hour to the airport and then an hour ride back home.
The car-seat mind you, is her least favorite object, possibly in her entire known universe.
I think it's the straps that get her.
This little girl just doesn't want to be fenced in, restrained, or held back by anything.
Thankfully the VW Passat stereo system really does "go to 11".
That way I can drown out the angry tidal wave of sound coming from behind me.
Then its with the wife again, and not just me with the kids, ooh, ooh, and Heroes replays tonight, and the new
Doctor Who is on after.
We should get home just after both have finished recording, so we can plop down and have couple-time, seperately, together watching our shows.
I love Friday date-night.
My wife had a flight out to Boulder via Denver this evening.
7PM
Which meant picking her up from work and driving down to the airport in rush traffic, and then turning around to come back up, still in rush traffic the other direction.
Uncharacteristically, we made it to the airport, even in rush traffic, in an hour and three minutes.
Yeah, VW.
My record, off-peak, no-traffic is forty-eight mintues.
I was certain that the way back up to our house would more than make up for it.
But again, no, I was exiting the freeway onto our nearest surface streets in another hour and five minutes since dropping the wife off at the terminal.
I felt like I'd somehow, through no talent of my own, just dodged a falling two-ton heavy thing.
Then I saw the lights ahead.
The flashy kind.
Red and Blue.
Lots of Red and White
Even a couple of Orange.
Cresting a hill I could see the solid mile of brakelights between me and the emergency vehicles on the crest of the next hill.
Traffic was only getting by in one lane, in alternating directions at the command of one of the deputies on the scene.
It was absolutely disgusting.
Of course having to weave through emergency cones and follow the waving flashlight of the patrol officer demanded that we travel at a crawl right past it.
I used to live in an apartment complex that is accessed from that cross street.
I never turned left out of it because I was aware of how dangerous it was.
It really needs a light.
It is situated on the sharp peak of a hill in a 50 MPH zone.
Making it difficult to see cross traffic in either direction and hazardous to get up to speed before being surprised by it.
From the various distortions to the three or four (unsure) pieces of wrecked metal that used to be SUVs, it looked to be likely that somebody had attempted a left turn (north) from that cross-street (west) and had (perhaps negligently) been surprised by a vehicle proceeding south traveling at least 50 or (probably) more, which caught them on the driverside, then they both ended up in the north lane where they were both hit by another vehicle traveling north coming up the peak, and then all of that was possibly hit by other cars traveling both north and south, meeting at the peak.
There were a lot of sheets over bodies in cars and a lot of emergency crews with body bags.
They weren't hustling, which meant that anybody that they could still help had already been carted off, all that was left was the investigation phase.
That intersection really, really, really needs a light.
So, eventually I got home, and got the girls out of the carseats.
The youngest will of course be clueless as she couldn't really see out, but all the carnage was on the eldest's side and she's front-facing now in her carseat.
She was uncharacteristically quiet the rest of the way home. Though I've heard that we all forget just about everything sometime around when we're four or so.
I just can't believe that the longest part of the drive wasn't down and back on the freeways at rush hour.
Then the youngest started squalling for her dinner (hey, she's only 7 months) and you know what, tonight, it didn't seem all that bad, by comparison.
Bread and yogurt.
Wow, did you see that guy?
Man. That coulda been bad.
What an obit. Guy going to the store and turns out he's in line for the great checkout in the sky.
Bread and yogurt.
Nearly took my front bumper off.
Damn.
The light was red buddy.
That means stop.
This ain't seventh grade, I'm not your girlfriend, and no, you're not an ambulance.
Bread and yogurt.
When are they gonna fix that pothole? It's been there for over a year, right?
Which door should I park by? Depends if I use self-checkout or not.
What am I getting.
Bread and yogurt.
Right. Self-checkout it is. Bag boy union, hmmpf, who ever heard of such a thing?
Oh, there's a good one.
Right next to the, oh my, is she checking me out?
Damn, I'm going to miss short skirt season.
Looky that, perfect parking, I should be an instructor or something.
Wish I had my camera.
Bread and yogurt.
Is it gonna rain?
Better hurry.
What time is it?
When does her show end?
Plenty of time I'm sure, ah, there's the hand baskets.
What was I getting?
Bread and yogurt.
Right, where's that in this store?
I remember at the other one, but at this one its..
Picturing it, yeah, got it.
Together at the far back, left side.
Hey, look watermelon. That'd be tasty for breakfast tomorrow.
Might even put the wife in the mood for mid-week naughtiness.
Season fries? Who can say no to seasoned fries.
I'll cook 'em in the oven so their healthier than fried.
Frozen pizza on sale!
Ahh yeah, daddy's having pizza tonight!
Toaster waffles! The eldest will love toaster waffles.
That'll be great for the Grandparents to give her next week while we're on vacation.
Ice cream, two for one? Well shiii-ite.
Hmmm. Might make the wife think she's getting heavy though...
and we all know that means an end to the hope of mid-week naughtiness.
No icecream. Got it. It'd be good but... No, let's hold out for naughtiness.
What was that thing I was looking for?
Oh, yah, my foot hurts. I was going to try a corn remover on those callouses from the rose thorns.
Lets see what they have in the pharmacy section. Doo-dee-doo. Aha. Corn removers. Cool.
Okay, you know you're in pain when you say, "Corn removers, cool."
I'd go to the doctor but he wants to do a full physical complete with fasting and crap.
Even a tetnis shot.
How about I just promise to avoid rusty nails, huh doc?
Yeah, this should work.
Am I done? What else did I come for? The baskets getting full.
Oh, bread and yogurt, right!
Hmm, there's the bread and we're on the home stretch, just turn the corner to the...
Huh, the yogurt guy is totally blocking my access.
Can't they re-stock, you know, at night? When the store it closed and they wouldn't be in the way of the shopper?
Isn't that WHY stores close to customers? To take care of all the house-cleaning like re-stocking?
I'd ask him to move but his boxes are everywhere. Dude, I totally can't get through.
Well, there's a little space on the end, so I could reach...
Hey! Is this a plot? A conspiracy? They've only left access to the premium yogurt that's $3 and completely blocked the more reasonable 50 cent containers. I suspect you all.
All right, no yogurt then, fine.
I'll see you another day yogurt re-stocking guy, you can't block my fruit on the bottom forever!
