Thursday, November 15, 2007

A little late...

Yeah, I know I said I was going to post yesterday, but there's no one reading this but me, so I have no one to dissapoint but myself. Anyway, on to the subject at hand. When there are two cars pacing each other on a two lane road, who is supposed to do what? In my opinion, it should be the car in the left lane. Where I live, there are signs all over the place saying things like "Left lane is for passing only" and "Slower traffic stay to the right". Now, this doesn't mean that people actually read these signs and follow their directions. But when you have cars pacing other and no one can go around, it can cause some traffic back-ups and also make the other drivers angry. So, in my opinion, the driver in the left lane either needs to speed up and pass the driver in the right lane and then get into the right lane or they need to slow down and get in the right lane. Since the left lane is supposed to be for the slower drivers and the drivers who are not passing, then the responsibility falls to the driver in the left lane to make sure that they are driving faster and passing the drivers in the right lane. Now, if you go to pass the person in the right lane and they realize how slow they are driving and speed up and now are matching your speed, I would think that if it was safe, to go ahead and speed up enough to pass the vehicle. If they look like the kind of person who is going to get all pissed off if you do that, slow down and get behind them. Just act logically. I know that's hard for the majority of people who drive, but just think before you act. Ok, that's it for today. Talk to y'all later.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Trying to keep it short...

I looked at my last two posts (actually, the only two posts), and realized that I tend to type to much. Just like I talk to much. So, from now on, I am going to try to keep it short. As you've figured out by now, I have no tolerance for bad drivers. What I really don't understand is when I talk to other people about driving, they always say the same things I do. So, if everyone thinks they drive well, how come no one really does? I talk to my husband about and then when we are in the car, he does the exact things I say I can't stand other drivers doing. The area I live in has been rated among the worst drivers in the country. This morning for example, there is a lot of construction going on and one of the major highways has the minimized lanes with concrete barricades along the sides. The car in the front of a long line of drivers was pacing a semi. So, that blocked two of the three available lanes. In the third lane, was just a regular slow driver. That's fine and dandy because the third lane was the far right lane. Not the fast lane or the passing lane. When this car eventually passed the semi, it paced directly in front of the truck so that no one else could get around. Why do people insist on driving like that? They go slow so no one can pass. Why? Why? Why? They need to realize that they are not the only car on the road and they need to be courteous of other drivers and get out of the way. Just because you want to go 45-50 mph in a 55 doesn't mean everyone else does. Respect your fellow driver. Understand that the person behind you may have somewhere important that they need to be, it's not your job to restrict their speed. That is the job of the police. I think tomorrow I will discuss whose responsibility and why to move when two cars are going the same speed in different lanes on a two lane road. Hint: It's not the car in the slow lane.

Friday, November 9, 2007

Why do certain people feel that they are so special that they don’t have to wait in the same line the rest of us have been waiting in for thirty minutes? This morning on my way to work there was a car accident that had the 2 middle lanes of a 4 lane highway blocked. This is at a place on the highway where you have another one merging with it. As I am approaching my exit, I see everyone ahead of me braking so I do the logical thing and start braking also. The thought never once runs through my head to get out of the lane and see how far up I can get and still have some one let me in. Now, the way I look at it is if you see everyone slowing down and forming a line and it happens to be the lane you need to be in, then you need to get over as soon as possible. If you forgot that you needed to exit there, then you need to keep going and turn around elsewhere when you have the chance. You should not drive to the front of the line, stop, put your blinker on and expect someone to let you over. I don’t know about the rest of the folks waiting, but I’ve patiently waited my turn for however long it took and there is no way that I am letting you over. What makes you feel entitled to skip the line? I have to be a work also and I have to drop my kid off at daycare first. You’re not the only one trying to get there, so stop trying to cheat. I see people doing this kind of this quite often as the area I live in is constantly under construction. I was heading up to my parents house one time and they were repaving one of the highways. For about five miles there were signs telling everyone that the right lanes were closed and only the farthest left lane was open. As soon I have this information, I get into the left lane. Sure enough, the right lanes start to dwindle, and the traffic in the left lane slows down. There are people in the right lane passing me and some are actively trying to change lanes. Now, I have several rules when it comes to letting someone get in front of me in traffic. The first is that you have to be using your blinker. Just because you slow down and start trying to stick the nose of your car in front of mine does not signal a lane change. Stop trying because I won’t let you over. Second, if they have been advertising for about five miles that all lanes except the one I am in are ending, I will not let you over if you speed past everyone and try to get in at the last minute. At least I won’t willing let you over. I will not risk my life, my kids’ lives, or my cars life because you want to get somewhere 30 seconds faster than everyone else. Third, I will not let you over if you were behind me and got into the next lane and are now rapidly approaching the car that the rest of us are trying to pass. You can wait like the rest of us. I one time had someone actually get out of their truck to come yell at me because I wouldn’t let them in front of me when all the other lanes ended. The signs were up for about 10 miles. He knew the lane was ending. I had been stuck in the traffic for about 20 minutes. He wants to skip to the front and I was the car he came to to try to get in. I guess he though that since I have a little car and he had a big truck that I would succumb to the whole he bigger, he’s first mentality. Well, it was 10 at night and my daughter was asleep in her seat so I just wanted to get home. He keeps trying to edge in and I keep not letting him. So finally, there is no room left and he had to get behind me. Everyone is slowly creeping along and we stop. He puts his truck in park, gets out (on a major highway!!) and comes up to me to yell. I just yelled right back at him. I asked him who he thought he was to think that he had any special privileges to get in front of me and that I had been waiting in that lane for 20 minutes and that there was no way I was going to let someone like him get in front of me. Right then, the traffic started to move a bit and I told him to get in his f-ing truck and drive. I do have to let you know that most of my tirade towards him included the f word multiple times. I bet y’all want to know what he said. I will be honest with you and say I have no clue. I truly didn’t hear a single thing he said to me because my blood pressure shot up and I don’t think anyone could have said anything to me that I would have heard over the sound of the blood rushing through my head. He did get in his truck and drive and tried to pass me, but we got stuck in more traffic and I never saw him again after that. But seriously, why do people think that they don’t have to wait when everyone else is? I would just let them hit me when they try to weasel their way in, but there is a very high rate of uninsured drivers and with my luck, that’s who would hit me. Ok, that’s it for today.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

It's About Time...

Ok, so I’ve been kicking around for the last six months, reading blogs and constantly thinking about starting my own. Well, before I start, I guess I should explain a little more about myself. I’m 27, married and have two children. My husband is not the father of my oldest daughter, but she looks at him as her dad since he’s been around more than her real dad. Her real dad is always in touch and sends his child support on time, it’s just that he lives a few states away and has another child there with his girlfriend and that’s something I’ll talk about later. But in short, he’s a good guy and I love his family. My husband and I have been together for about 3 years. From the day we met, we talked about marriage, having a baby just pushed it up earlier than we expected. But, I have to say, I couldn’t have married a better man than him. Tall, good looking and sweet as anything. Neither of us has a job that’s anything special. He works for his father and does side jobs for extra money. I work for a large health insurance company auditing claims. We make enough money to get us what we need and every now and than what we want. We live in a small town of about 7,000 people that is about 30 miles south of one of the largest cities in the country. It’s great because I don’t have to deal with the city if I don’t want to, but I have some where to shop when Wal-Mart, Beall’s and H-E-B don’t have what I want or I need something a little higher on the retail scale. I was in the military for five years. After high school, I had gotten into a nice private university in town, but I wasn’t mentally prepared for college. Even though I was still in the same town I had spent my entire life in, I was finally, kind of, on my own for the first time. I also think I had a problem with anxiety. I loved all the classes I was taking, but I would miss one class then work myself into a frenzy how I could never go back to class because I missed just one. And the funny thing about it is most of my classes had to do with literature and I did all my reading even though I never went to class. So, after being told I couldn’t return after my first semester, I started working for my dad. One day, a friend and I were driving around and she suggested we stop by the recruiter’s office and next thing you know, I’m signed up to join the Navy. Wouldn’t change a thing about it though. I was lucky enough to never be stationed on a ship and never leave the US. I did more traveling in middle and high school than I did in the Navy. Enough about me for now, let me tell you about my family. Both my parents are special education teachers. My mom for a high school, my dad for a middle school. My father was a non-practicing lawyer and owned a restaurant for most of his life, decided to sell the restaurant and retire, but then got bored of being retired. He then couldn’t find a job because he had too much education, was too old, had too much experience, and most companies thought that they would have to pay him too much. So, he went back to school and got his teaching certification. My mother finished up her masters degree in something having to do with special education or educational testing when I was in high school. She went to the same school as my oldest brother and I got to watch both of the graduate walking the same stage. I used to think that my mom was the biggest bitch in the world, but it didn’t take me long to realize that she was just trying to raise me to be a good person with a hard work ethic. There are still many things about her that I don’t understand, but I’ve learned to cope with them. I have two older brothers who are both professionally successful. One is a lawyer and the other works for a large website company fixing things that I can’t even begin to comprehend. The lawyer is an asshole and knows it, but rarely tries to do anything about it. The computer geek is really sweet and I’m trying to find someone to marry him because he needs to have kids because he really is a big kid at heart. The lawyer needs to find a dominatrix to punish him. I am the only one in my family to not have anything higher than a high school diploma. I am trying to rectify that situation. I want to be a forensic accountant and with how long I am taking at getting back into school, I will probably be in my 40s by the time I get to that level. Both my husband and I have Asian best friends. We like to get them together and call them the “Super Asian Best Friends”, like they are our own personal super hero team. My best friend tends to forget that she is Asian and say things such as, “I love Chinese food so much that sometimes I think I should be Asian!” She really is one of the smartest people I know, she just tends not to think about what she says before she says it. Remind me to tell you about the lavender honey one day. I love my little girls. One is 5 and the other is 11 months. The 5 year old is a crazy insane little thing that takes after me. She loves running around at the park and almost anything outdoors. She’s the little girl that’s chasing after bugs instead of the ball at soccer practice. The 11 month old is the spitting image of her daddy and is about as relaxed as he is also. She loves to play peek-a-boo and really thinks that we can’t see her when she covers herself with her blankie and starts crawling away. Right now is the time in her life where I wish I could just freeze time and keep her the way she is forever. I have ADD. My mom started trying to get me diagnosed when I was about 5 years old. She then tried again in high school. When I moved back home after the Navy, she said that one of the conditions of living at home and having them help me with my daughter was to go to a psychologist and get things figured out. So, 20 years after the first time my mom tried to get me diagnosed, the doctor said I was ADD. I have been on Adderall ever since then, excluding my latest pregnancy, and it has helped immensely. My only complaint is that people seem to think that Adderall is responsible for how good I am at my job. It takes them a while to figure it out, but most of them finally come to the conclusion that I’m good at my job even without the meds, but the meds help do my job for longer periods of time. Instead of working for about 10 minutes than getting sidetracked for about 20, I can work until I truly get bored with what I am doing, which most of the time, allows me to complete all the work I need to do for the day. I’m at work in a training class that is supposed to start at 7:30, but never seems to get moving till about 8:00. So, since I get here at 7 a.m. or earlier, I’ve decided to use my extra time productively and, no, not work, blog about things I feel I need to tell other people. Like this morning for example. Motorcyclists are always spouting off about how drivers of cars need to respect them more. And I try my hardest to respect someone on a bike, but when I see one of them do what they did this morning, it really pisses me off. I was taking my baby girl to daycare this morning and I stop and a red light to turn onto the street where the daycare is located. As I’m waiting for the turn signal so I can turn left, a motorcycle comes flying up the road I want to turn onto. A few seconds before he gets to the light it turns red. You see the hesitation produced by the decision of whether to stop or keep going and the sudden braking when the guy made the right decision. I think nothing more of it, grateful that he had decided not to ram his bike into the side of my car on this particular morning. I make my turn and the cars opposite of me start moving when their light turns green. As I get ready to turn into the daycare’s parking lot, I check my rear view mirror to make sure no one is behind me because I don’t trust other drivers to pay attention to my turn signal or my brake lights. There’s no one behind me, but guess what I catch sight of in my rear view? The motorcyclist looking both directions and then taking off through the red light. The beauty of it was that about 5 seconds after he ran the red light, his light turned green. Now, I don’t care who you are, where you’re trying to go, how late you’re running, when the light is red, it’s not a suggestion. Red means stop, green means go. It’s not a hard concept to understand. Even my 5 year old gets it. I’m not going to say that I’ve never run a red light. I have and I will admit to it, but only about two times did I even come to a stop and then go. There is a light at a highway intersection that when you are in the turn left only lane late at night never seems to register that you are there. You will watch the lights cycle over and over and over and over. After about 5 minutes of watching every other light turn green except yours, and your bladder is about to burst, you will look both ways to make sure a cop or other drivers aren’t around and you will drive on. And then you call the police non-emergency line and let them know, but they don’t do anything about it and after you’ve done this a few times, you start to get smart and don’t get into that lane when you’re driving that way late at night. When you’re approaching a green light on a 70 mph highway and it turns yellow a little bit before you’re there and you know that you can’t safely stop your vehicle in the distance before the light and it turns red while you’re going through, that’s okay. I know most people usually sit a little bit after the light turns green anyway to make sure that no one is going to run it. I have so much to say about the drivers in the city I live near and even the drivers in the little town I live in. Seriously, when the speed limit is 40 mph, do you really have to turn in front of me and go 20? You obviously aren’t in a hurry to get anywhere, so why didn’t you just wait for me to pass? It would have taken you an extra 10 or 15 seconds, but it would have been to considerate thing to do and drivers in this area are anything but considerate. Has anyone else noticed that the shorter the distance the driver has to go, the faster he will drive to get there? I have about an hour commute each way, every day and the people who drive the worst are always the ones who just got onto the highway and are taking the next exit. Well, before I start, I guess I should explain a little more about myself. I’m 27, married and have two children. My husband is not the father of my oldest daughter, but she looks at him as her dad since he’s been around more than her real dad. Her real dad is always in touch and sends his child support on time, it’s just that he lives a few states away and has another child there with his girlfriend and that’s something I’ll talk about later. But in short, he’s a good guy and I love his family. My husband and I have been together for about 3 years. From the day we met, we talked about marriage, having a baby just pushed it up earlier than we expected. But, I have to say, I couldn’t have married a better man than him. Tall, good looking and sweet as anything. Neither of us has a job that’s anything special. He works for his father and does side jobs on his own for extra money. I work for a large health insurance company auditing claims. We make enough money to get us what we need and every now and than what we want. We live in a small town of about 7,000 people that is about 30 miles south of one of the largest cities in the country. It’s great because I don’t have to deal with the city if I don’t want to, but I have some where to shop when Wal-Mart, Beall’s and H-E-B don’t have what I want or I need something a little higher on the retail scale. I was in the military for five years. After high school, I had gotten into a nice private university in town, but I wasn’t mentally prepared for college. Even though I was still in the same town I had spent my entire life in, I was finally, kind of, on my own for the first time. I also think I had a problem with anxiety. I loved all the classes I was taking, but I would miss one class then work myself into a frenzy how I could never go back to class because I missed just one. And the funny thing about it is most of my classes had to do with literature and I did all my reading even though I never went to class. So, after being told I couldn’t return after my first semester, I started working for my dad. One day, a friend and I were driving around and she suggested we stop by the recruiter’s office and next thing you know, I’m signed up to join the Navy. Wouldn’t change a thing about it though. I was lucky enough to never be stationed on a ship and never leave the US. I did more traveling in middle and high school than I did in the Navy. Enough about me for now, let me tell you about my family. Both my parents are special education teachers. My mom for a high school, my dad for a middle school. My father was a non-practicing lawyer and owned a restaurant for most of his life, decided to sell the restaurant and retire, but then got bored of being retired. He then couldn’t find a job because he had too much education, was too old, had too much experience, and most companies thought that they would have to pay him too much. So, he went back to school and got his teaching certification. My mother finished up her masters degree in something having to do with special education or educational testing when I was in high school. She went to the same school as my oldest brother and I got to watch both of the graduate walking the same stage. I used to think that my mom was the biggest bitch in the world, but it didn’t take me long to realize that she was just trying to raise me to be a good person with a hard work ethic. There are still many things about her that I don’t understand, but I’ve learned to cope with them. I have two older brothers who are both professionally successful. One is a lawyer and the other works for a large website company fixing things that I can’t even begin to comprehend. The lawyer is an asshole and knows it, but rarely tries to do anything about it. The computer geek is really sweet and I’m trying to find someone to marry him because he needs to have kids because he really is a big kid at heart. The lawyer needs to find a dominatrix to punish him. I am the only one in my family to not have anything higher than a high school diploma. I am trying to rectify that situation. I want to be a forensic accountant and with how long I am taking at getting back into school, I will probably be in my 40s by the time I get to that level. Both my husband and I have Asian best friends. We like to get them together and call them the “Super Asian Best Friends”, like they are our own personal super hero team. My best friend tends to forget that she is Asian and say things such as, “I love Chinese food so much that sometimes I think I should be Asian!” She really is one of the smartest people I know, she just tends not to think about what she says before she says it. Remind me to tell you about the lavender honey one day. I love my little girls. One is 5 and the other is 11 months. The 5 year old is a crazy insane little thing that takes after me. She loves running around at the park and almost anything outdoors. She’s the little girl that’s chasing after bugs instead of the ball at soccer practice. The 11 month old is the spitting image of her daddy and is about as relaxed as he is also. She loves to play peek-a-boo and really thinks that we can’t see her when she covers herself with her blankie and starts crawling away. Right now is the time in her life where I wish I could just freeze time and keep her the way she is forever. I have ADD. My mom started trying to get me diagnosed when I was about 5 years old. She then tried again in high school. When I moved back home after the Navy, she said that one of the conditions of living at home and having them help me with my daughter was to go to a psychologist and get things figured out. So, 20 years after the first time my mom tried to get me diagnosed, the doctor said I was ADD. I have been on Adderall ever since then, excluding my latest pregnancy, and it has helped immensely. My only complaint is that people seem to think that Adderall is responsible for how good I am at my job. It takes them a while to figure it out, but most of them finally come to the conclusion that I’m good at my job even without the meds, but the meds help do my job for longer periods of time. Instead of working for about 10 minutes than getting sidetracked for about 20, I can work until I truly get bored with what I am doing, which most of the time, allows me to complete all the work I need to do for the day. Okay, I am going to stop for now before I write everything that’s in my head and I have nothing more to write. But don’t worry, every day there’s something else that I feel the need to share with everyone