One thing I've learned is that you get exposed to all kinds of people when you slug to work. You meet some really wonderful, friendly, helpful people who shower, and you meet some really nasty people with bad attitudes or smelly bodies. Lucky for me, I won the stink lottery this morning.
It's the Friday before my vacation, and I'm leaving early today. For my reward, I get to the lot ready to drive my fellow commuters to work, and I find that nobody is there. So I wait....and wait...and wait. A few people begin to straggle in, and I decide to call out multiple destinations until I get lucky. My second destination call proves to be lucky with one man as he climbs into the front seat. He's the kind of guy who likes to exercise before work, which means he does his workout when he gets there and THEN he showers. It appears he also likes to work out at night because he smelled like a moldy gym bag full of sweaty jock straps. I'm thinking to myself "great, he wants to sit up front with me."
Then another gentleman wanders up and takes me up on my offer. He climbs in the backseat, and his smell actually outpowered Mr. Clean up front. Coming from the backseat, you KNOW that he smelled bad, but this was a uniquely bad smell. He smelled like a dirty hamster cage. Those of you who had hamsters as a kid know what I mean. It's a sort of pissy cedar chip smell mixed with sweaty fur and rat poop. You know, the point that your cage reached when your parents didn't have to tell you to clean out the cage because even you couldn't take it anymore. Yes, that was him in all his non-seatbelt wearing glory. I'm hoping his smell doesn't stick to the babyseat!
I know it's Friday, and I know lots of folks are going on vacation after today (ME INCLUDED), but SERIOUSLY, can you not shower before going to work? I understand the desire to stay in bed a little later on Friday mornings. I get that completely. But power-showers are worth the effort. In fact, Al Gore says short showers will stop global warming (probably because your noxious dirty body fumes aren't depleting the ozone layer?). Either way, do your part to contribute to the health of all current and future generations by showering and applying a generous amount of deodorant--stick or aerosol are fine with me.
But before I conclude for the next beautiful week, I must ask the one question that may never receive an answer.
How does a grown man come to smell like a hamster cage?
Friday, March 21, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Talkin' about Revolution
Sometimes I feel like I'm in the spin-cycle of WTF. (Yes, we all know what that means, and I spelling it out would be inappropriate. You can say it out loud in your own head, but then who would be the potty mouth?) :) There are days when everywhere I look I discover something that makes me ask the quasi-rhetorical question of "WTF?" But I digress.....
There is a woman who frequents our little slug line, and she is either campaigning to be "Ruler of the Free World," "Captain of the Safety Patrol," or "Supreme Line Leader." I'm thinking she'll take any of the above positions should they be offered to her.
Unfortunately for us all, she goes to one of those locations that doesn't get a lot of traffic, so she's generally in line for a long time. And she screws up EVERYTHING!!!! In some cases, her "input" has almost gotten people steamrolled by confused drivers.
Recently, I arrived on the Grey Mile, and she was positioned roughly in the upper-middle part of the line. She has the ability to make her voice carry long distances, much to the despair of my one remaining good ear, and she likes to call out the drivers' requests. She gets so carried away that she starts to call them out incorrectly, especially when the cars start to stack up. For example, someone will pull up and call out "Pentagon." She will yell out "Pentagon" and if nobody responds before the next car pulls up and calls out "L'Enfant" she will start to get confused. I don't know if she's ADHD or just not capable of multitasking, but she starts to confuse the locations. The results are people wandering up to cars they shouldn't be getting into and then jumping back out when they realize they are in the wrong car. In the meantime, someone behind that person has taken their ride from them because they were lucky enough to figure it out first. People are hopping in and out of line, and it's TOTAL mass confusion. At one point, she was pointing people to cars and telling them to hurry up. She's yelling at other cars to move up as people are crossing in front of them. For SOME reason, our line is predominantly populated by lemmings because they are blindly following this lady's "directions."
I am going to run with the theory that she was either denied a position in the safety patrol in elementary school or she lost several elections for class president in high school.
Lucky for me, I'm developing my own little reliable "clique" of riders and drivers, and we all look out for each other. We basically use hand signals and codes to coordinate our ride sequence. I, former safety patrol member and elected student government official, have created a well-oiled process for moving riders and drivers through our line for our particular destination without the input of this disorganized scatter-brain. We all sort of giggle when she tries to intervene. Everyone else can have her.
Right now, our little sluglot runs itself without official governance. As our Founding Fathers reminded us, bad government is not a viable alternative to anarchy. Right now, our lot is facing anarchy as a result of bad government. Madame Line Leader, may I suggest you back off and mind your business before you face a revolution you can't handle!
Viva la sluglot!
There is a woman who frequents our little slug line, and she is either campaigning to be "Ruler of the Free World," "Captain of the Safety Patrol," or "Supreme Line Leader." I'm thinking she'll take any of the above positions should they be offered to her.
Unfortunately for us all, she goes to one of those locations that doesn't get a lot of traffic, so she's generally in line for a long time. And she screws up EVERYTHING!!!! In some cases, her "input" has almost gotten people steamrolled by confused drivers.
Recently, I arrived on the Grey Mile, and she was positioned roughly in the upper-middle part of the line. She has the ability to make her voice carry long distances, much to the despair of my one remaining good ear, and she likes to call out the drivers' requests. She gets so carried away that she starts to call them out incorrectly, especially when the cars start to stack up. For example, someone will pull up and call out "Pentagon." She will yell out "Pentagon" and if nobody responds before the next car pulls up and calls out "L'Enfant" she will start to get confused. I don't know if she's ADHD or just not capable of multitasking, but she starts to confuse the locations. The results are people wandering up to cars they shouldn't be getting into and then jumping back out when they realize they are in the wrong car. In the meantime, someone behind that person has taken their ride from them because they were lucky enough to figure it out first. People are hopping in and out of line, and it's TOTAL mass confusion. At one point, she was pointing people to cars and telling them to hurry up. She's yelling at other cars to move up as people are crossing in front of them. For SOME reason, our line is predominantly populated by lemmings because they are blindly following this lady's "directions."
I am going to run with the theory that she was either denied a position in the safety patrol in elementary school or she lost several elections for class president in high school.
Lucky for me, I'm developing my own little reliable "clique" of riders and drivers, and we all look out for each other. We basically use hand signals and codes to coordinate our ride sequence. I, former safety patrol member and elected student government official, have created a well-oiled process for moving riders and drivers through our line for our particular destination without the input of this disorganized scatter-brain. We all sort of giggle when she tries to intervene. Everyone else can have her.
Right now, our little sluglot runs itself without official governance. As our Founding Fathers reminded us, bad government is not a viable alternative to anarchy. Right now, our lot is facing anarchy as a result of bad government. Madame Line Leader, may I suggest you back off and mind your business before you face a revolution you can't handle!
Viva la sluglot!
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Keep on Truckin'
I’ve been taking a bit of a break from blogging to try to regain some focus. I have had people tell me that I should focus more on the “positives” of slugging. I’ve been mulling that thought over for quite some time, and I have basically concluded that I’m one of those people that perform better when complaining. In the spirit of optimism, I’m going to attempt a positive entry; however, not right now.
First, I have to complain. I have so many after all these weeks that I don’t even know where to start! OK, yes I do!
I’m going to start with the obnoxious, completely oblivious, self-centered big-truck drivers. Parking in a commuter lot is at a premium in some places. I happen to be in one of those places. I arrive at the same time, give or take a minute or two, every morning. On some mornings, parking is plentiful. On more mornings than I care to remember, I end up driving because the lot is full. But on most mornings, I’m squealing into the last available space. This morning was no exception, but the problem is that when the person parked in front of me leaves to go home he’s going to be towing my car. Let me explain.
There is a phenomenon here in the United States. Despite the high gas prices and the lack of necessity, we have a large population of people, particularly men, who like to drive gigantic, enormous trucks. I believe, but I could be wrong, that these trucks were invented for the “working man” to haul his various work supplies. There are all kinds of justifiable reasons for owning a large pickup truck. Construction, landscaping, repair work, etc, etc, etc. HOWEVER, if your big ass truck is parked in a commuter lot, odds are pretty good that you don’t need it to do your job. I’m guessing the main reason it’s parked there is because it uses up 50 gallons of gas a minute, and you can’t afford to drive to work in it. So, since we’ve established that you are an idiot, I can move on to why you are also a jerk.
I personally do not care what a person drives. I’m not an environmentalist. I believe global warming is a good thing. Bring on the warm weather! I don’t slug to save the environment. I slug because it gets me to work faster, and I can nap. I DO care when your vehicle invades my precious space. There are at least THREE trucks that are REPEAT OFFENDERS, daily, on this particular topic. One guy pulls into his space with his enormous truck, and he always parks over the line. So basically, unless you drive a mini cooper, you can’t fit a car into that space. In most cases, that’s a wasted space. Not for me, though. Today, it was the last space. Let’s just say that my car is hitching a ride home today because my front bumper is on top of his hitch ball. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I did it intentionally. I hope when he pulls off he damages my vehicle because I wrote down his license plate number. There is another guy who does a similar thing but he can’t really help it because his truck is SO long that he can’t park in just one space. I’m thinking that if you need a truck that large for daily life, you probably shouldn’t be working in Washington DC. To add insult to injury, he actually back-parks into the space!!! So, many times, I’m pulling into the lot and I have to wait for 5 minutes while he maneuvers his 18-wheeler into 2 parking spaces. I’ve parked on top of him before as well. But the back-parking! UUUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Why do you men feel the need to prove your "manliness" by demonstrating to the world that you can drive not only forward, but backward as well. It's like a genetic programming that evolved out of the frustration of the horseback riders who couldn't get their horse to go in reverse. I don't really see how parking your car backwards makes you more of a man. I can parallel park. Does that make me bisexual?
The arrogance of these truck drivers makes me mental! They simply don’t care that they are screwing someone out of the opportunity to commute to work because they feel the need to own a monster truck.
To end my little rant, I must address the ignorant ass who thinks that the commuter lot is a used car lot and parks and LEAVES his car there with signs all over it. I can assure you that NOBODY in that lot is looking at your broken down, beat up piece of junk that is taking a permanent parking space and thinking “hmmm, let me buy that.” So, MOVE IT. Unless you are paying for that spot, and you aren’t, you need to move that crap NOW. The next time I have to drive because there isn’t any parking left, I’m going to buy some window paint and paint “TOW ME” all over the windows!
I don’t know about you, but these little complaints are cathartic. That which I cannot change makes me angrier. And I deal with it by writing about it.
For the record, I’ve made lots of friends by slugging. There are people I commute with nearly everyday, and I have come to really like them. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop complaining!
So, if you are a regular reader, feel free to weigh in. Want me to tell more of the positive stories? I have to warn you that I have to leave a lot of details out because of the need for anonymity, so there aren't going to be as many "nice stories." I'd love to hear from you! :)
First, I have to complain. I have so many after all these weeks that I don’t even know where to start! OK, yes I do!
I’m going to start with the obnoxious, completely oblivious, self-centered big-truck drivers. Parking in a commuter lot is at a premium in some places. I happen to be in one of those places. I arrive at the same time, give or take a minute or two, every morning. On some mornings, parking is plentiful. On more mornings than I care to remember, I end up driving because the lot is full. But on most mornings, I’m squealing into the last available space. This morning was no exception, but the problem is that when the person parked in front of me leaves to go home he’s going to be towing my car. Let me explain.
There is a phenomenon here in the United States. Despite the high gas prices and the lack of necessity, we have a large population of people, particularly men, who like to drive gigantic, enormous trucks. I believe, but I could be wrong, that these trucks were invented for the “working man” to haul his various work supplies. There are all kinds of justifiable reasons for owning a large pickup truck. Construction, landscaping, repair work, etc, etc, etc. HOWEVER, if your big ass truck is parked in a commuter lot, odds are pretty good that you don’t need it to do your job. I’m guessing the main reason it’s parked there is because it uses up 50 gallons of gas a minute, and you can’t afford to drive to work in it. So, since we’ve established that you are an idiot, I can move on to why you are also a jerk.
I personally do not care what a person drives. I’m not an environmentalist. I believe global warming is a good thing. Bring on the warm weather! I don’t slug to save the environment. I slug because it gets me to work faster, and I can nap. I DO care when your vehicle invades my precious space. There are at least THREE trucks that are REPEAT OFFENDERS, daily, on this particular topic. One guy pulls into his space with his enormous truck, and he always parks over the line. So basically, unless you drive a mini cooper, you can’t fit a car into that space. In most cases, that’s a wasted space. Not for me, though. Today, it was the last space. Let’s just say that my car is hitching a ride home today because my front bumper is on top of his hitch ball. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I did it intentionally. I hope when he pulls off he damages my vehicle because I wrote down his license plate number. There is another guy who does a similar thing but he can’t really help it because his truck is SO long that he can’t park in just one space. I’m thinking that if you need a truck that large for daily life, you probably shouldn’t be working in Washington DC. To add insult to injury, he actually back-parks into the space!!! So, many times, I’m pulling into the lot and I have to wait for 5 minutes while he maneuvers his 18-wheeler into 2 parking spaces. I’ve parked on top of him before as well. But the back-parking! UUUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Why do you men feel the need to prove your "manliness" by demonstrating to the world that you can drive not only forward, but backward as well. It's like a genetic programming that evolved out of the frustration of the horseback riders who couldn't get their horse to go in reverse. I don't really see how parking your car backwards makes you more of a man. I can parallel park. Does that make me bisexual?
The arrogance of these truck drivers makes me mental! They simply don’t care that they are screwing someone out of the opportunity to commute to work because they feel the need to own a monster truck.
To end my little rant, I must address the ignorant ass who thinks that the commuter lot is a used car lot and parks and LEAVES his car there with signs all over it. I can assure you that NOBODY in that lot is looking at your broken down, beat up piece of junk that is taking a permanent parking space and thinking “hmmm, let me buy that.” So, MOVE IT. Unless you are paying for that spot, and you aren’t, you need to move that crap NOW. The next time I have to drive because there isn’t any parking left, I’m going to buy some window paint and paint “TOW ME” all over the windows!
I don’t know about you, but these little complaints are cathartic. That which I cannot change makes me angrier. And I deal with it by writing about it.
For the record, I’ve made lots of friends by slugging. There are people I commute with nearly everyday, and I have come to really like them. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop complaining!
So, if you are a regular reader, feel free to weigh in. Want me to tell more of the positive stories? I have to warn you that I have to leave a lot of details out because of the need for anonymity, so there aren't going to be as many "nice stories." I'd love to hear from you! :)
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