Month: April 2004

I was reading a magazine and some celeb (I can’t remember who – no wait, it was Quentin Tarrantino) has all these arcade games in his house. It made me think how cool it would be to have a home arcade. He’s even got a photo booth. I don’t think I’d need one of those. I don’t see a lot of need for taking crappy little 1×1 pictures of myself, even if I do happen to have a good hair day.

I’d definitely have a pinball game or two. I know some people have a favorite pinball machine (“Oh, I’d get one of the classic “Dukes of Hazzard” machines. It’s a dream of mine”) but I don’t have a preference. A friend’s husband is an aficionado – he owns a couple, fixes them, etc., so I could call them and get advice.

I’d want one of those crane machines, where you try to pick up fifty cent stuffed animals by putting about twenty dollars into the machine. And maybe one of the ones where you flip quarters up into little buckets to win tickets. Would I have to have a redemption counter? I’d price everything for 1000 tickets or so, just so I won’t have constant lines from my son and all his friends cashing in 5 tickets at a time. “Oh, ya, that pencil? 1000 tickets. 2000 for the yo-yo.”

Maybe I should get started on building an addition to the house for my arcade room.

You have to love children.

Junior: “I grabbed his head. But only by the red part.”

My nephew has red hair.

Grabbed a screen shot of the following image from the Worcester Telegram. The caption doesn’t quite match.

You might think I named my site The Big DumpTruck because I drive one. Or because I really, really like them. If you’ve been here long enough (since 1996? Or 1998 when I registered the domain?) you know that it’s called BDT because I used to have a really long commute, and I used my website to complain about it, and things like being stuck behind those mammoth dumptrucks that spew sand and rocks as the rumble along the highway. My website was me, throwing those pebbles and rocks at your screen. Or something like that.

I find those big dumptrucks hugely annoying when I’m trying to get to work. They take forever to get up to speed, and scare the hell out of me when I see one coming up behind me because I figure they have the stopping ability of a freight train. And they ping rocks off my windshield at 65mph.

I realized this morning that because it’s spring, all the construction projects are starting. Fantastic. Yippee.

The past two days, I’ve gotten stuck behind dumptrucks and other construction vehicles on my commute, and today it took me TEN MINUTES LONGER than usual (40 instead of 30), simply because the construction truck 4 cars ahead of me couldn’t get up to speed in my lifetime. I know for you Boston commuters 10 minutes is a laugh, but think about this – there was no other reason for my delay than this truck. When he slowed because the car in front of him was turning left, he couldn’t get back up to speed again. The on-ramp to 495 is a hill…I was only doing 20mph when I pulled on. Ten extra minutes because of ONE vehicle. So ya, I’m ranting about 10 minutes.

I take route 117 to 495, and just after the light at the junction of 111, there’s a huge hill. If you get stuck behind a dumptruck that was stopped for the light there, you’re dead. It’s been a dumptruck on the hill week for me.

I stopped at Target on my way to work this morning, because I thought it would be more efficient for me to stop before work than to leave in the middle of the day. I can’t go at the end of the day because I have to pick up Junior by 5:30pm or incur the wrath of the daycare people.

It was a good decision. When I saw the parking lot, I thought “Oh, crap, they aren’t open yet.” I did the slow cruise by the door to see the hours. Huh. They were open already! Duuuude! I was one of maybe 6 cars in the lot (not in the area where the employees were obviously parking). I had the whole place to myself!

Now I’m not telling you WHICH Target, because I don’t want you people ruining a good thing for me. But hey, I got in and out as fast as humanly possible, given that I had to look for something in the corner of the store furthest from the door, and it’s a very large store.