Have you noticed…

People are really not that nice lately. Seriously. Have you noticed this? Driving to lunch with co-workers I was cut off twice before I even got out of the parking lot. Two individuals, in two spots along a 50 yard strip of pavement ran stop signs and cut me off. One was crossing the road I was driving on, a one lane stretch alongside another one lane stretch in the opposite direction, separated by a grassy median. I had clear right of way with no obstructions. He had a stop sign, and had to cross two lanes of traffic. He shot out of a bank drive-through and blew right through the stop sign about 10 feet in front of me. I was forced to slam on the brakes and he gave me a dirty look. Maybe he wanted a collision and was upset that I’d foiled his plan?

I started forward again, travelled forward about 20 yards and began to ask my passengers if they’d noticed a trend in nastiness on the road lately when a second car shot through a second stop sign and pulled in front of me, cutting me off. Again, I had full right of way, and she did not even touch her brakes. She was exiting the Burger King part of the lot, so maybe she got one of those new BK Angry Whoppers and was itchin’ for a taste.

Can someone tell me what the hell is going on. Many people I have spoken with in the last few weeks have confirmed that they sense a steep escalation in reckless nastiness, with particular emphasis on two areas.

1: in the car, driving around, especially around paring lots, stop signs and other traffic signals.
2: in the service industry – food service, counter help, retail employees, clerks, etc.

I have to say, though, the car stuff is really getting to me. I mean, if the checkout person at the grocery store is slow or even rude, I will be minorly pissed for a few minutes, but as soon as something else distracts me, it will be forgotten. €But in the car, if I happen to sneeze, or reach for my water bottle, or laugh at a funny Ricky Gervais comment at the wrong moment, one of these aggressively obnoxious drivers could actually do me great bodily damage. I could be injured or killed. My wife or kids could be injured or killed.

Do you ever wish there could be a reality check moment? I mean, there’s this guy in a BMW who thinks he’s got all the pep and privilege in the world, so he doesn’t worry about the silly old stop sign. And then there the chunky in Honda Pilot with arms like my thighs who surely feels that she has bulk, in all its incarnations, on her side. She too could not care less about the stop sign. I would like to be able to sit down at a table with an arbitrator and these people. I’d like to compare car insurance and lease versus ownership info. I’d like to see some documented proof of education and maybe a relationship history. I’d like to know who has satisfactorily completed anger management training, who has kids, who has lousy credit, whatever.

There is a lot of crap going on in a person’s head. 50% of marriages end in divorce, the number one thing couples argue about is money, when people are upset they act (drive) irrationally and erratically. I’m thinking there are a lot of lost jobs and broken marriages piloting V8s right now, and that is, well, kind of flipping terrifying.

Alright, I’m rambling, but you must see my point. People are stressed to the gills right now, and this is manifesting itself as selfishness and recklessness – at least on the road. Everyone I talk to says the same thing. I bet you’ve noticed it too. So what can we do about it?

Teleportation.

That’s right, teleportation. Will somebody please get on that right now. We need some Nightcrawler BAMF shit and we need it now! It is so much more important than figuring out clean coal. For real. Clean coal? that’s like pursuing dry water. Get with the program. We’re almost a decade into the 21st century. Will somebody please tell me why I can’t yet fax my butt to work?

A Place to Sit

Did you know that baby gear has an expiration date? I mean, I guess it makes sense. We certainly want to keep our kids safe – it is priority number one – but the car seat we bought for Jake (approaching 7 years old) is already a year bad. Why? Something about plastic deteriorating…or so they say. But really, don’t you think it has a little bit more to do with Graco Century selling more car seats to multi-child families? I’m not saying these big corporations don’t have the safety of our children as their highest priority but…I don’t know how to finish that thought.

Seriously, though, I think of the array of hand-me-down car seats that our kids have used in various grandparents cars – most of which predate the whole expiration date thing – and I really have a hard time believing those almost-antiques are any less safe than the brand new ultra-suede Scarsdale baby special.

Nevertheless, we bought in. I mean, after all, the safety of our children is priority number one. So we are going to be adding our old car seat to the landfill and the new baby will be sitting in a new polka-dot wonder. We haven’t gone too crazy with the baby purchase, though. We got a new swing and a new stroller to match the car seat. No baby jogger stroller or tow-behind-the-bike trailer thing. But our old stroller was pretty shot, so it was, I think, a fair purchase.

Sigh. Babies ain’t cheap, and the gear is expensive. Especially when you have to but seconds and thirds. Oh well. Procreation is a bitch.

Port Sushi

I’m down in Virginia at my company’s home office again. Once again I am enjoying the modern-stylings of the aLoft hotel. Incidentally, I am leaning toward uh-loft as the proper pronounciation since I’ve noticed heavy use of the word “aloha” in their corporate personality. The desk guy said, “Aloha” when I checked in. The room key card has ‘aloha’ printed in the top corner. The recorded woman’s voice on the wake up call opened with the greeting “Aloha!”

So.

Last night we had a nice dinner at a sushi place. I had a ridiculous plate of many colors and ate every single bite. It was quite nice.

There were about 10 of us, and for a long stretch of the conversation we talked vacations. As usual I was in the minority. There was a lot of talk of Outer Banks rentals, Key West, Aruba and the Bahamas. Las Vegas also came up a few times. Nobody, though, mentioned Branson, MO. I considered bringing up the Vegas of the midwest, but the convo took a turn and I forgot all about it.

Eventually somebody posed the question to me – where would I like to go. I gave it some thought and realized where my top destination pick is right now: Portugal. It just came to me, but after further thought, I’m sticking with it right now.

I’d definitely love to return to France. Spain and Italy both call to me as well. But right now, I think Portugal is my top pick. I’ love to sample some real Port, in-country. I’d also like to explore the wines a bit more. In the past years I have uncovered a few real Portugese gems of the luscious red variety. There was a pretty great syrah from Fado. And they had an inexpensive blend of syrah, Touriga Nacional and some other stuff that was a pretty yummy every day. And who could forget Cortes de Cima.

Yeah, Portugal. So, if you’re looking for a late birthday gift, or maybe early Christmas…

wink wink.

Get me some Putz Insurance

I flew out of Stewart in Newburgh with a connection in Philly to get to Norfolk, Virginia. It wasn’t bad, a far better experience than my last trip northward about 6 weeks ago. But, as is wont to happen, there were some unhappy folks on the plane. When we boarded the little jet in Newburgh, a nasty 50-something woman bitched and moaned her way onto the plane.

She was directly in front of me getting on the plane and when the extremely pleasant Kentucky-based flight attendant asked how she was doing, the woman went right into it.

“Not good at all,” she said. The flight attendant started to respond with sympathy, but Nasty Pants just went on a tear.

“You made me miss my plane and stay overnight at that awful hotel and now I just want to go home,” she ranted.

Masterfully maintaining her composure, the flight attendant replied, “I just work on this plane, ma’am. I didn’t cause you to miss anything.”

I actually laughed out loud and got a delightful smile in response. “You know it’s all your fault,” I scolded her and she chuckled. The bitchy one didn’t even hear. And she spent the rest of the boarding time moaning about the seat, switching three times before we took off, and once after.

Other passengers on the packed little jet (only like 50 seats) were in surprisingly good humor and willingly swapped with the nut job, but she showed no appreciation. Of course. She clearly had a ‘me against the world’ view, and, well, what can you do. I mean, annoying nasty pants travel insurance would be nice, but I haven’t seen it offered. Not yet, anyway.

Hmmmmm. All I need is a business plan…

Snow Big Deal

We’ve had a couple of good little snows over the last few days. A couple inches each, but on top of the ice that’s persisted for over a week thanks to subzero temperatures, it added up to a pretty wintry weekend. We actually ran out to the grocery store yesterday (Sunday) morning before the plow came out and I was, once again, astounded by the rampant stupidity of the standard American road monkey.

A couple of times, when I was leaving plenty of room between myself and the car in front of me, I had some schmuch in a little shitbox steaming up my tail. Now I was driving a fairly new All Wheel Drive Forester, and it was behaving quite well. In my rear view I was watching – at one point on the way home – some jerk in a little Mazda fishtailing all over the road. And in spite of being barely able to make it up a few of the inclines that weren’t even that steep, he would get right up behind me on the downhill track. I mean, I’m watching the guy almost go off the road as he slams on the brakes, and he still never learns his lesson.

What is the problem with people? I understand that it can be stressful to drive at a safe speed in the snow. I know that a lot of people just want to get it over with as quickly as possible. But I’m not exactly an old lady in the snow. I actually drive a lot more aggressively in bad weather than a lot of people I know, so…what the hell?

But the rest of the day was much nicer – after we got home from the store. I’ve especially been enjoying all the tracks in the snow. In the back there are a few deer that visit routinely. There are Turkey tracks all over the front, especially down near the road. And there are all kinds of critter tracks on the back deck and on the front step and such. They were loving the crusts of bread I’ve been throwing out back.

We have a very wooded lot with hundreds of big old hardwoods, but I wonder if we shouldn’t look into some Wildlife trees to provide treats in the warm weather, and maybe some extra shelter in the winter. I don’t know much about such things, but when it’s below zero for 5 or 6 days in a row, I start feeling really bad for the local critters.