Month: September 2004

(The rest of you can probably skip this. I’m writing publicly to the guy driving the Oxygen truck. I assume the Oxygen was in tanks, but I couldn’t see through the walls of the box truck. It had one of those little diamond warning signs that said “Oxygen.” Okay.)

Dude. I don’t know if this was your first trip down route 117 through lovely Bolton center, but there’s a really good reason why the guy in the pickup truck behind you was sitting on his horn in the center of town. You see, the way it works at the blinking light is the people on 117 let those waiting at the intersection in, almost at a one-for-one ratio. It’s amazingly polite. Sometimes it’s 1 car in for every 2 or 3 on 117, but you get the idea. They don’t wait there very long before someone lets them merge in. It’s like this every single morning, and has been since the first time this route was my commute, back in 1988.

You stopped to let at least 10 cars out in front of you. What the hell was wrong with you? After the 4th or 5th car, when the guy behind you beeped, did you decide you’d “show him” by letting everyone else out too? Don’t you think letting 10 people out in front of you is excessive under any circumstances? I do. You have the full right of way on that road, and by sitting there like you were broken down, you made things worse further back for people on 117. We need flow. The normal process is that you let someone out in front of you while you continue in a forward motion…nobody actually stops. You stopped.

Don’t do it again, or I won’t be responsible if the guy turning purple behind you gets out of his truck to “talk” to you about the situation.

Back in July I made a chart for the three kids counting down the days and weeks until we leave for Florida. Back then there were 13 long weeks to wade through. Now we’re down to less than 6, and it’s getting far enough past summer that I can actually start to pull together the clothes we’ll bring, because we won’t be wearing them any more this year. We wore shorts yesterday though, it was darned hot. But you only need to leave one pair out and available this time of year. By the time it’s warm enough again to wear them, they’ll have been washed and dried.

Besides, I can always pull them OUT of the suitcase. If, God willing, there’s another steamy Saturday good enough for swimming, I’ll know where the suits are. Otherwise, I need to start the move to our fall clothes, which means moving the summer things out of the drawers. Of course, a lot of my stuff I just leave in the closet all year, so it’s more like reorganizing it to put the fall stuff in a more prime location.

What was I talking about? Oh, Florida. I would respectfully request that Mother Nature take her bluster elsewhere for the rest of the hurricane season. We’ve been planning this for six months now, and I don’t want it ruined!

We got through the first soccer game with no injuries, no tears, nothin! The other team seemed to have a little more skills than our guys, but at this age, it almost doesn’t matter.

I don’t know if they keep official score, I mean, I think they do. A couple of our goals weren’t counted, because they weren’t allowing goals for the goalie standing in the net. Oh well, they all had fun. That’s what matters, right?

Not getting overtly political here, but I am providing a link to a site that is, because I got a little ruffled yesterday when I heard some of the claims as to why the Bush memos must be forgeries. Regardless of how I feel about the candidates, to have all the popular press immediately jump on the “it’s not real” story of some bloggers simply because they lined up a Word document with a printed PDF is slopping and irresponsible. You can’t tell ANYTHING by doing that. A PDF isn’t a photograph, for goodness’ sake.

Apparently, the “experts” who said Times New Roman didn’t exist on typewriters back in the 60s and 70s had never actually used an IBM typewriter. Idiots. Besides, the font used in the memo isn’t Times New Roman.

But this is good reading, so here’s the link, talking about how yes, it was possible to do superscript without a computer. I mean, imagine being able to accomplish anything without a computer? Oh, and don’t forget to skim the comments section. Lots of good stuff there.

This week’s Daily Probe features another one of my Interviews! A copy now lives on the Still Life With Interview page.