Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Still in a Crappy Mood

I'm not sure how else to be as I sit here in my house in Baltimore in the middle of January during a cold spell. With no heat.

Yes, after a miserable weekend of TB being frightfully ill and plans falling through left and right while I tried to keep SB occupied and content enough on my own so that TB could wallow in his illness, a part to our heat pump died last night.

The house got down to somewhere in the 50's before TB came home from Home Depot with a couple of space heaters. We parked one in our room and one in SB's room, and we were comfortable for the night. But waking up this morning at 5am only to have to venture downstairs into the cold cold COLD frigid air to get dressed? Not fun at all. I debated taking a hot shower, but decided against it since I'd be comfortable while in the shower, but turn into a Popsicle as soon as I got out.

Anyway, all this stuff have kept me true to my 2009 form of being in a horrible mood. So my post today is going to be a list. Specifically, a list of the things that other drivers do that piss me off.

-Forget to signal. I don't get this. It's not difficult, all you have to do is smack a lever. You don't even need to take your hands off the wheel for this. I ALWAYS signal. Even if it's 3am and I'm the only person on the road for as far as I can see. If I'm changing lanes, exiting, turning, whatever, the signal goes on. And it's just as irritating when people turn on their signals halfway through their turn. At that point, why bother? I've already figured out what you're doing.

-Straddle 2 lanes. I get this a lot when I'm on my way home from work. It usually occurs after a turn, the driver can't really commit to a single lane, so they just straddle two, as if they're the only driver on the planet and no one has any desire to pass them, or even drive near them. Usually when they do this, they're also going really really slow, too. Which makes it only 15 times more annoying.

Not get into the left lane when someone's trying to merge into traffic...and they're the only car on the road. This happened to me this morning at a little before 6am. I'm a really good merger. I use the ramps to speed up, so by the time I'm ready to merge, I'm usually keeping up with traffic. I don't like to slow other people down. But when I have to brake or floor it in order to get onto the road because the ONLY CAR ON THE ROAD wouldn't get into the left lane and was interfering with my merge, that pisses me off.

Now, if there's a lot of traffic, then I don't expect people to let me in. Sure, it's the nice thing to do, but I totally get it if they don't want me in front of them. No big deal. But if there's no one else on the road....come on!!

When people slow down instead of speeding up on the ramps. I don't understand. If they're going to slow down, then how are they ever going to merge into traffic? I was taught to accelerate when you're on the on-ramp, and slow down when you're on the off-ramp. It makes sense. But some people come to a freaking complete stop on the Baltimore beltway so they can check for traffic. How do these people survive?


Ok last one- not because that's all I got, but because I have to go take SB to dance class.

When people slowly putter down the turn-only lane, only to decide at the last second they don't want to be in that lane after all, and then sit there with their turn signal on until someone in another lane lets them through. Nuff said.

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