Oddball Update

That’s how long it has taken my morning to disintegrate completely from “Today’s gonna be a good day!” to “Please, if thou be merciful, put a bullet through my head.” Yeeeeeeah.

Well, at least I can say this: This disgusting morning was prefaced by one of the best weekends I’ve had in a while. I got to sleep in on Saturday morning, waaay late actually, followed by some relaxing at home, then on Sunday I (with help from my wife) got my computer room cleaned up real good. Typically I go through there once a year and throw out a bunch of junk, put stuff away and organize things. Up until now, I’ve had four old computers sitting on the floor, a huge 22” monitor box right in the middle of the room, and all manner of junk collecting dust everywhere else. This year I also cleaned out the closet in there, which was arguably in worse shape than the room itself. The 35-gallon trash can in the garage is now stuffed to capacity, mostly with boxes. And the room is much more livable. I’m very pleased.

We also picked up our Thanksgiving dinner at the grocery store—frozen turkey, stuffing, potatoes for mashin’, all the good stuff. This year my wife will have Thanksgiving day off, so we’re going to have our own meal together. For the last couple of years, we’ve gone to a friend’s house for their Latin-themed Thanksgiving party (hey, it’s Florida). Pretty good stuff, but we’re opting for something a little quieter this year.

So, after a weekend like that, I was on a bit of a high this morning. I’ve got a big project I’m about halfway done with at the office, and it looks like I’ll be able to wrap it up just before the holiday weekend, enabling me to go home with my mind free and clear. Unfortunately there was little I could do to salvage my mood after this morning.

I got going slightly late this morning. I’d forgotten I wanted to copy a file from my computer to my USB drive, so I spent a couple extra minutes doing that. By the time I got out to the car, it was already 8:11. All right, running a little late here. Not really a big deal. The air still felt thick from yesterday’s damnable humidity (it’s November already. Can we cut this crap out?), and it had warmed up enough outside that I had to put the A/C on in the car. So I drive on out to the exit road from our community, and find a big ol’ line of traffic there, waiting to get out. The cars are just backed up for miles on Vanderbilt Road. So, I wait.

Finally I get up to the head of the line. First thing I notice is some idiot trying to make a left turn from the right-turn lane. There are two lanes leading out of our community. It’s a T-intersection, so you can only turn left or right; you can’t go straight. The left lane has a big left arrow painted on it, and the right lane has a right arrow. The bonehead in the gold Olds Intrigue apparently didn’t understand that. Well, fine. We’ll just have to give him a break, because he’s probably from New York or some other place where people don’t know what arrows are.

He gets out of the way, and now I’m waiting for my turn to make a right and—oh, joy—sit in stop-and-go traffic for miles. But I can’t get a break. The light up the road has changed to green, and the huge, mile-long line of cars is finally on the move. Obviously, since they’re all right on each others’ asses, I can’t make my turn until the whole backlog is cleared (or until somebody doesn’t pay attention, leaving me an opening). The latter doesn’t happen, so I’m sitting there idling for going on three minutes.

And then I hear it.

BEEEE BEE BEE BEE BEE BEEEEEE!

Some insufferable bimbo in a German vehicle about three cars back is actually tap-dancing on the horn—apparently because I’ve decided not to turn into the path of an oncoming dump truck by now. I mean, there are literally two car lengths—at most—between each vehicle that’s creeping by on the street. Just how am I supposed to make my turn? And beyond that, just how is playing congas with your horn button supposed to help speed things along? I suppose I should once again make a concession that this is probably someone from New York, where they honk all the time just for fun. Ironically, if that’s the case, then their being here is part of the reason why they have to wait a billion hours to get anywhere on our roads. You helped make the bed down here, fuckwit. Now lie in it!

This got me supremely angry, because it’s the second time this has happened to me in as many weeks. Last time it was some fucking bitch in a Saab who was right behind me and kept honking every few seconds. In that case, it was plainly obvious that she could see the exact same thing I saw—a huge flow of cars going down the street. I was so stunned by the fact that the woman could be such an ignorant bitch, it took me a few honks to realize it was actually her and she was actually honking at me. And you wonder why road rage incidents happen! WTF is wrong with these people? Are they shitting their pants or what?

So anyway, I finally get a chance to turn onto Vanderbilt—with much tire-spinning gusto, I might add—then promptly run into our community sprinkler system, which is doing its usual fine job of soaking the pavement rather than the grass. I then proceed to spend the next 35 minutes sitting in stop-and-go traffic, which has gotten even worse now that they’ve opened Livingston road. You’d think that opening a new road would make the traffic better, but not on Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is the road that they keep making worse while kissing our asses about how they’re going to make it better by widening it. Well, why don’t you try waiting until it’s widened before you do the following things, which they’ve already done in the past year or two:

• Put up a new traffic light at the request of the rich fucks at Tiburon, which is about 250 yards away from another traffic light at a major intersection,
• Build a new major intersection about 500 yards down the street from Tiburon, linking the single-lane Vanderbilt to a 3-lane major thoroughfare. The thoroughfare gets more time on their green lights than we do.
• Whip up a brand spanking new grocery store and strip mall on Vanderbilt and CR-951, then promptly service it with a left-turn lane that’s long enough for about three cars. The rest will back up onto Vanderbilt and cause all traffic to grind to a halt until the left turns are complete.

With each of these additions, traffic gets worse and worse on Vanderbilt, which is a road with only one lane of traffic on each side. At one of the major intersections, six lanes of traffic converge into one. It’s an everyday occurrence to see cars backing up into the intersection, blocking the flow of traffic so that you can sit through an entire green cycle without moving an inch, because your path is blocked. There are accidents here all the time. And yet the only thing that gets done is the county putting up NO TURN ON RED signs which only further hamper the flow of traffic, because on the red is sometimes the only chance you get to MAKE your fucking turn. (Thankfully, at least, after much bitching, the county took that sign down.)

Anyway, that’s what I have to deal with every day, both going to work and coming home. I finally get to the office today about ten minutes late, so I hurry on up there and put my lunch in the fridge. Which, as usual, is full of empty baskets, half-full bottles of nondescript gak and other shit that people leave there and never touch again, making it impossible to find a place to put my lunch bag. I shove some stuff to the back and find some room for it. Then I head for my desk.

Or try to. I’m immediately stopped by a co-worker, one of the new hires, who proceeds to ask me if I happened to do this for her yet, or if I happened to have time for some changes to this marketing thing, or if I yada yada. This makes me about ready to crack some skulls. Like most men, I hate being nagged. But I hate it even more when I tell someone that I’m very busy and won’t have the spare time to complete tasks for them for another week, and they come back a day later and ask me if I completed the tasks yet. God…DID you HEAR ME! I said I WOULD NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS! This same thing recently happened with one of my website clients—I asked him politely to give me until after Thanksgiving to complete something for him, and two days later he asks me to do it again. It’s like, hello? Has Thanksgiving happened yet? Check your calendar!

As if that wasn’t enough, this female coworker of whom I spoke then proceeds to ask, “So are we ever gonna get the software I requested or what?” JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! I AM NOT THE IT MANAGER! The problem, I’ve come to realize, is that when people (especially new hires) go to the correct person for an answer and they don’t get one immediately, they ask someone else. If I happen to be that someone else, usually I try to be helpful by giving them an answer, or getting the task done for them instead. I think I am going to stop doing this. I’m going to play ignorant, act like I know nothing but my own work. And I’ll tell you why: Because the very instant I do that simple favor for these people, they will never again go to the correct resource when they need something done. They will go right to me instead. I guaran-fucking-tee you that if one day I walked into the kitchen, saw something spilled on the floor and decided to wipe it up, somebody would be showing up at my desk every goddamn time they see a spill and saying, “Did you notice that somebody spilled something in the kitchen again? When is the cleaning crew gonna get to that? Maybe you can do it this time like you did that other time so we don’t have to step in it?” Oh, okay! And how about all that shit you just crapped all over me? You don’t seem to mind if I step in that! I’m not saying I would immediately capitulate and do as they suggest, but that doesn’t eliminate the grating irratance of the fact that they would keep on asking me and asking me anyway, and I can only take so much of that before I throw down and wind up in jail for multiple homicide. You see, I have a short fuse. As you keep abusing me, I just light up and smile at you and turn the other cheek like a good little Christian, until eventually some magic little line is crossed and then abruptly I’m a fucking DEMON.

So anyway, yeah, I guess you could say that I am really looking forward to this Thanksgiving holiday. In fact, I look forward to any opportunity to remove myself from the rest of the world, especially at this time of year when the snowbirds show up and the resident stupidity quotient goes through the roof. I think it’s hardly a coincidence that during the season, I see a sharp spike in the number of bonehead traffic maneuvers out on the road. The other day I saw a big ol’ Yukon GT drive right into the back of a Pontiac Vibe because he wasn’t paying a lick of attention. That’s the nightmare I have over and over, that somebody’s gonna do that to me.

Okay, enough steam has been blown off…time to get back to work.

Categorized as Rants