Yesterday and Today

Yesterday, I had to drive in to work for a bit. As so often happens, I wound up being delayed time and time again by drivers who were going just at or even below the posted speed limits, either on the two-land country roads that I have to traverse, or in the left lane of the highway when I got on that. In most cases, when I was finally able to pass (sometimes by crossing the double yellow line because the only alternative was to stay behind them for miles, poke along, and get to work late), I noticed that it was almost always SOME JACK-ASS WITH A CELL PHONE UP TO THEIR HEAD, obviously more interested in their conversation than they were in their driving or the time constraints of all of the people behind them. On the two-lane which I must use for twenty miles--the one that only has three short passing zones--it seemed more the rule than the exception to come up on a whole long line of cars all driving slow, everyone held back by the idiot at the head of the line who hadn't noticed or didn't care that there were two dozen cars on their back bumper while the closest car ahead of them had gone over the horizon a long time ago. And the ones on the highway? They always seem to park themselves behind some slow-mover in the right lane and just sit there, blocking everyone else who might want to actually use the passing lane for, you know...PASSING!

People like this need to be shot, or at least run into the ditch. When I get to be President, there will be a new law allowing for the sideswiping of anyone driving slow and talking on the phone. A simple declaration of "I needed to get somewhere but I couldn't get past that jack-ass on his/her phone..." will stand as an absolute defense against any criminal or civil claims that might be filed by said jack-ass. It's harsh, but oblivious cell-phone yakker/drivers have it coming and have for some time now.

Oh--and it did not escape my keen observation that most of these drivers were women. I'm just saying...

Today, New Dog--the Dog That Resists Being Named--and I stayed home and enjoyed the first snow-fall of the year. We were actually going to go to the dog park but the roads were all being shut down by people crashing. I stopped to help at one and it was--you guessed it--a young woman driver who had slid into the ditch and flipped her SUV up on it's side. When I got there, EMS had not arrived yet so I pulled over to make sure that she was ok. She was, and predictably, she was complaining that the roads were too slippery and now her new truck was wrecked because the county wasn't doing anything about it.

"No, honey," I replied. "You wrecked your own truck because you were driving too fast." (And probably on your phone, I thought privately.) "Notice how none of these other people are going into the ditch?" I could also still make out her skid marks in the snow, and she'd fish-tailed several times before hitting the ditch. She'd clearly had some speed on. Idiot.

When the Sheriff's Deputy arrived (and commenced to writing her a ticket for Operating Too Fast for Conditions), I left and went back home. It wasn't worth driving half way across the county in this weather with more people like that one on the roads.

Back at the house, I lit the fire up in the stove and Dog and I lay down to take naps--him on his dog bed and me on the couch. So nice.
Afterwards, I thought that a walk might be in order so I began putting my shoes on. Dog came up beside me and whined a bit, and when I ignored him, he reached over and took his leash off of the arm of the chair that it was on and turned to me with it in his mouth. I laughed and took it from him, setting it on the couch next to me only to have him pick the end of it back up and set it on my lap. WTF?! Where did he ever learn that? Smart dog.

So we went walking, and as we did so, we encountered the UPS man making a delivery to one of the neighbors.
"He's not going to bite me, is he?" asked the UPS man as we walked up.
"I hope not," I replied. "This is a new dog."
The UPS man tentatively gave this one a pet, and told me that he'd been worried for a moment because he thought it was Lagniappe.
"Aw, Lagniappe liked you," I told him, after explaining that Lagniappe was gone.
"That's not the impression I got from him," he said. "Every time I ever went over there when you weren't around, I thought that he was going to bust out that window and kill me."
"Seriously?" I asked, laughing.
"Yeah," he said. "Didn't you ever wonder why I always left your packages down on your driveway instead of up on your porch? That dog always scared the hell out of me."

Good job, Lagniappe. You were a damn good dog.

This new one's got some big paw-prints to try to step into.