FourBux

Pre-holiday ramblings

As I sit here in my cubicle, surfing the internet and listening to my fellow cube-ites “working,” it’s all I can do to stay awake. It’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and everyone in the office is screwing around. There’s Christmas music on every station on the radio. There’s a station in Phoenix that began playing all Christmas music 24 hours a day back at the beginning of November, I retaliated by deleting it from my car presets. Now they’re even sprinkling it in on Last.fm. Suck. It was my last hope for not hating the holidays and now it’s gone. I hope they’re happy. At least there’s the iPod.
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The giants are out to get me!

So, not one week after posting a rant about soccer moms and their super-sized kid-mobiles, karma comes around to gently remind me that men, too, often drive more vehicle than they can handle.

I picked up Mom on this afternoon to go spend some time catching up, over coffee, of course, and on the way back, Gigantor in an Ford F350 decides to change lanes on top of us. Thankfully nobody was hurt, but let me tell you, that’s not something I want to have happen again. Rounding a corner on the highway and getting pushed off the road by a raised pickup: priceless.

At least until I hear back from his insurance company.

Can you even see the front of that thing?

This morning I was almost run over by yet another unqualified driver, and I just don’t feel like the tiny beep-beep of my horn was enough of a cry against the onslaught. I hope that this site doesn’t end up becoming one of those rant-a-day sites, but I can be quiet no more. I have a bone to pick, and it isn’t with someone you usually associate with, um, bone picking. I have a problem with the Soccer Mom.

What!? A complaint against that bastion of parental involvement? What am I, a communist? Are apple pie and hot dogs next? No. Not until I get run over by an apple pie or a hot dog.
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Game over - I lose

Regardless of the culture from which we hail, there are a few things that tie us together as humans, common threads if you would, that bind us into the adaptable, creative species that we are:

A mother’s touch.

The taste of a good meal.

Money. (I’ll also say maybe beads that one can exchange for other goods and services.)

And that sinking feeling, deep in your gut, that you get when you’re trying to speed across multiple lanes of traffic, you stomp on the gas, only to have the engine stall. You know what I mean. That feeling is closely linked to the warm, wet feeling in your lap as you try to get the car started again before four lanes of oncoming traffic goes all Frogger on your ass.
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Um, you talking to me?

So Tuesday night, on my way home from a particularly demeaning day of corporate graphic design drudgery, I had the radio on, the top down, trying to soak up the some of the sun’s soothing rays. It’s been raining here for what seems like weeks, and although the state needs it, it’s not much fun in a convertible in need of a new top.

But that day was sunny and a little cooler, so the top was down and as I cruised along the highway at the rush-hour speed of seven miles an hour, all I wanted to do was get home and crash. Which, of course, I couldn’t do, because I had several hours of freelance work left, but at least I could be at home in my totally disorganized and only partially unpacked apartment.

Once we finally escaped the freeway, traffic meandered through the streets at whatever speed it could, and seeing how this was the end of the day, we were all going five miles an hour over the limit, which put us at 45MPH on this particular stretch of the road.

Suddenly, interrupting my sunny, quiet ride home, comes a voice from above:

“Speed limit’s 40, buddy.”
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I do feel a little dirty about it

So, folks, I’m a little embarrassed. I did something last night that I haven’t done in a very long time. At home, and by myself no less. After waiting until my wife had gone to class, I changed into something comfortable, turned down the lights, turned up the LastFM station, and went to town.
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