I woke up a little later than usual this morning at around 9:45. I got up, did the usual sitting around for what felt like about a half an hour, then happened to look at the time on my computer.
11:15.
The hell? No way was that an hour and a half.
Then I remembered the stupid time change and I went from being puzzled to being annoyed, as I’d already lost an hour of the day. It’s not like I was going to do anything with that hour, but even so, I didn’t appreciate having it taken away from me.
In any case I suppose I should get around to my delayed ranting.
I was getting ready to leave work on Wednesday. The computer was in the process of shutting down, and Iwas preparing to remove the computer from its docking station and lock it in my cabinet for the night.
Naturally that’s when my phone rang.
It was only a minor delay, but at that point in the day a delay of five minutes at work can result in the addition of ten minutes to my drive home. There are very limited windows of opportunity to avoid some of the more hellacious traffic levels, so every second counts.
After getting off of the phone , I was prepared to just head out the door, but I figured I should talk to my boss about the call. It wasn’t anything terribly important, but it was something that I figured I should ask/tell her about.
Total delay? Ten minutes. Fortunately the time added to the drive doesn’t continue to double as the delay increases, but a ten minute delay in leaving at that point still means about an additional fifteen minutes on the road.
The first big annoyance was some jackass who didn’t have a Smart Tag/EZ Pass, yet decided to ignore the sign saying “Right Lane Smart Tag/EZ Pass Only,” and then got penned in right at the toll booths, unable to move over to one of the exact change/full service lanes, causing me to be at a dead stop behind six other cars, which is especially annoying given that the whole point of having a Smart Tag is to not have to stop at the damn toll booths.
Once I got past that point some woman was merging onto 28 without considering the possibility that there might be oncoming traffic to merge with, and, without looking and while right alongside me, she started moving into my lane.
I didn’t have time to do anything but speed up and swerve into the other lane – hoping that I wouldn’t hit anyone – and when I pulled back into the lane ahead of her the bitch had the nerve to honk her horn at me.
Five minutes later someone else pulled more or less the same maneuver, but this time I didn’t have another lane to swerve into, so I had to slam on my brakes. I didn’t honk my horn because a. it’s so wimpy sounding and b. if the jackass didn’t hear the sound of my tires screeching it’s unlikely he would have heard the horn.
Then I was stuck behind a line of cars on Sycolin. Sycolin is a narrow, winding, rutted, partially-unpaved road that’s really not suitable to be driven on by the faint of heart, especially since most people – like me – tend to drive like maniacs on it.
After all, the road inspires a kind of mania, and that’s what makes it so irritating when some timid people who are actually concerned about the safety of themselves and others – and who don’t want to get their precious SUVs, luxury cars, and minivans all dusty – get on the road. Stay the hell off, sane people! Let the lunatics run that particular asylum.
In any case, the big hold up there was a student driver.
I can appreciate the idea; take a student driver out onto a dangerous and poorly-maintained road as something of a trial by fire. Makes sense to me. But at or around rush hour? Screw the opportunity for a student to gain some experience; at that point, you’re just being a dick to everyone else.
I was set to meet Scott at Target so that I could pick up the Wonder Woman animated movie and then we could figure out where to eat. At the stoplight at the entrance to Target – at a red light – some idiot behind me honked his horn at me. The light is red, jackass. Admittedly, he might have been honking about something else, but at that point I was pretty well on edge and a hair’s breadth away from succumbing to road rage.
Once I got into Target things didn’t improve much, as they didn’t have the Wonder Woman movie on Blu-ray. WTF?
We decided to check out the Wal-Mart – the ghetto one that I generally avoid – across the street. They had a space for the Blu-ray, but it was empty, and when we finally tracked down an Associate we were informed that it was “in transit.”
Scott was going to wait to buy the DVD until the next week, so I decided that I’d just buy it on DVD so that we could watch it and then he could keep it and pay me back later.
(He ended up paying for my ticket to Watchmen in trade.)
After that we went to eat at IHOP, hoping that they wouldn’t have the soul-destroyingly bad bacon that they did last time. I actually played it safe and ordered something sans bacon (ham steak and eggs), but Scott took his chances. Luckily the bacon was much improved this time.
As an aside, our waitress was kind of cute, but her cuteness was ruined by her atrocious Southern accent. Gah, it was like nails on a chalkboard.
Anyway, that’s my big rant. In starting to relay my rant to Scott when I finally arrived at Target I had said, “The Universe has run out of ideas; it’s resorted to just throwing cars at me.”
I didn’t do much yesterday – or today, for that matter – beyond hitting the comic shop, where one of the employees informed me, angrily, that one reviewer had likened Watchmen to the Catwoman movie. Besides being an incredibly inaccurate claim, that just seems cruel. Even if Watchmen had been bad, there’s no reason to ever make that comparison.
I did pick up Wonder Woman on Blu-ray as well – it came with a little weirdly-articulared Wonder Woman action figure – and I also bought some fancy air purifier. It cleans the air three ways!
I figure I had to something, at least in my bedroom, as there’s always something floating around that irritates my allergies.
Anyway, that’ll do it for this entry.
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