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Posts Tagged ‘made my day’

Traffic and driving and “that look”

12 Oct

There’s a certain unspoken understanding between people that drive the same way: people who drive slow, people who are overly cautious, people from California – they all have certain idiosyncrasies that stick out if you happen to share them. If you’ve ever been on a long trip – longer than a few hours – you’ll probably be familiar with what I’m talking about.

For instance, on my last cross-country trip to California/Nevada (and back again, naturally) there were people who were enjoying the trip more than the destination, taking their time, just drinking in the sights and generally letting the journey relax them so they could better enjoy the vacation they were traveling to.

I am not one of those people.

Boy, I'd rather fuck a bag of glass than be here!


When I’m going somewhere, especially on a long trip, chances are I’m going to be on an interstate. The interstate system was not designed to be scenic. It was designed to get the military from point A to point B quickly and efficiently. When the military wants to get somewhere, they do not fuck around. Likewise, when I want to get somewhere, I want to get there as quickly and efficiently as possible.

So I hit the road, do my responsible 4 miles over the speed limit and turn on cruise control. Before long, I find that I’m switching lanes and keeping pace with the same several cars. Several cars that are driving in precisely the same way I am, passing when I pass, speeding up when I speed up, and generally being several of the most awesome people on the road because they are driving like I drive.

I had something very similar happen to me today while driving into work. I’m driving behind someone who is just maddeningly slow, doing roughly 5MPH slower than the speed limit and generally slowing up traffic. So as soon as I was able to get around this person, I did. I didn’t whip around them like a total asshole, but I changed lanes, and sped up…only to run into someone doing the exact same thing. ARGH!

Credit: Pinoy Blogosphere

But as I made that lane change, I noticed something interesting – someone two cars ahead doing the same thing. So we’re both changing lanes courteously – but with purpose – trying to get to where the traffic didn’t suck quite so much. After a mile or so, and right before I have to turn off, I pull up alongside this person and take a look because let’s admit it: you really want to get a look at the only other person on the road who isn’t driving like they’ve been huffing gas fumes all night. Turns out it was a somewhat attractive woman who looked to be about my age, and she had the same look in her face that I had on mine: “Hey, you suck marginally less than everyone else on the road! Nice!”

Sure it could have been all in my head, but either way, it set an awesome tone for the rest of the day.

 
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Posted in Awesome, Happened To Me

 

Space shuttles and Yoshi and my awesome kid

10 Oct

Credit: ePower Propulsion

So this weekend is my weekend with Thing 1 and Thing 2, and the oldest – Thing 2* – found a set of DVDs from the library on the history of the shuttle program. So now, space shuttles are his most favorite thing ever and all he talked about on the say home was watching the shuttles on TV and shuttles go *VOOM* and they have lots of fire to get to other planets and so on and so forth. Incredibly cute. Incessant, but still cute.

Unfortunately, all 4 DVDs in the set sucked from a young child’s point of view. So, needless to say, he was crushed when I told him that the DVDs weren’t really for little boys. Not that there was an excessive amount of shuttle-on-shuttle action going on mind you, but there was far too much talking, and not enough *VOOM* so we had to come up with an alternative. YouTube to the rescue! So find a couple videos of shuttles lifting off, queue ‘em up, and he couldn’t be happier.

But as he’s watching, he has this perpetually perplexed look on his face so I ask him if he has any questions. He points at the shuttle and says, “What’s that?” I tell him it’s the space shuttle, and he just gives me a little look and says, “No, not the shuttle, what’s under the shuttle?” After a second, I realize he’s talking about the solid rocket boosters. Actually, he was talking about the propellant tank and not the individual SRBs but he’s a little kid, so he’s not expected to know the difference yet. Why would you even bring that up? Jeez. Anyway, so I tell him that the whole setup underneath the shuttle is called the “booster” and I explain to him that the shuttle needs the booster to get out into space because space is really far away. What’s really great, is you can see it behind his eyes – he’s processing it, committing it to memory, synthesizing it for later use.

Not too much later, apparently. Next thing I know, he’s dragging his little brother – Thing 1 – over, demanding that I replay the video. So as soon as I do, he starts educating his little brother on all the finer points of shuttle technology – how planets are far away, and the shuttle can’t get to them by itself, and how the boosters help the shuttle and then they fall off when they’re all done helping. Thing 1 couldn’t really care less about the ins and outs of shuttles, and he keeps looking all warily at the shuttle, afraid it’s going to make a loud sound despite my assurances that it won’t. But he’s just happy to listen to his big brother tell him things, so he sits and listens.

This is not a car. This is a space shuttle.


Then, a few hours later, Thing 2 is just tearing around the room with the Burger King toy pictured to the right in his hand, making loud engine-like roaring sounds. I ask him if he’s pretending that it’s a space shuttle going into space, and he starts rapid-fire nodding his head. Then, he jams on the steering wheel, causing the red part on the toy to fall off and says, “The car is the shuttle, and this part is the booster and it’s falling off now because the car doesn’t need it any more to get into space!” and runs off, making more space shuttle sounds. Mixed metaphor or no, it was awesomely cute.

* – before anyone asks about Thing 2 being the older one while Thing 1 is the younger, here’s the deal: my then-wife and I couldn’t decide how many children we wanted to have, so instead of arguing about it ad nauseam, we decided to roll dice and count backwards from whatever number came up.

Well, not really “dice”. More like “die” – just one.

A 1d20.

…christ, I got lucky.

 
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Posted in Awesome, Family, Funny, Kids