Moronic Mergers

Be aware of your present location. Plan and prepared well ahead of execution. Maintain or approach the speed of moving traffic. Turn on your left or right blinker. Check your mirrors and blind spot while maintaining your speed. Move into the desired lane when there is a large vacant space. Continue driving. You have successfully merged your vehicle.

WHY IS THAT SO HARD?!?

People are such morons when it comes to merging. Either they wait until the last minute when they need to exit or the lane ends (sometimes there are equally moronic drivers hogging the lane that needs to be merged into with an on ramp), or they are weaving in and out of traffic to go faster than they need to in the first place. Even in traffic, merging should not be as big of an issue as it always becomes. People should automatically take turns merging and letting people merge in front of them. If we all functioned like that, there would be systematic merging at a maintained speed, and merging would never be an issue!

Why do people feel like they need to slow down when merging? Go the same speed as those traveling in the lane you will join, and then find a space to merge into! It is an easy concept. Children can perform this complicated task at a roller rink without the help of an engine or informative signage. Very few traffic jams or accidents occur as a result. Why are adults so incompetent even with the help of advanced technology and years of experience?

Honestly, I can't wait until cars are simply driven for us by means of AI. Until that time, there can be no order when the judgment of a person is part of the transportation equation. Rational thought and logic are completely disrupted by attention, emotion, and personality. We humans are incapable of consistent logical thought and execution. You might as well try making lemonade from water and yellow.

Of course, when we no longer have to physically drive our cars in order to get anywhere, commuting will be a completely different beast. I'd like my vehicle of the future to include a bed and darkly tented windows. I'll just sleep until we get there.

4A10SHUN

Mr. Lexus IS 350 RWD in Matador Red Mica, I saw you this morning on my way to work. Your car was shiny and sleek, and I almost spilled my coffee while allowing too much of my attention to focus on you and your alluring wheels. I might as well have been a bull. The color trapped my line of vision. It had a molten undertone that lures you in like a moth to a flame, even though you might get burnt.I watched you speed past me, and it was all I could do to stay at my own pace and not race after you. While you were leaving me behind, I saw your vanity plate: 4A10SHUN. It said it all, and suddenly the spell was broken.

You had my attention when I was caught up in the beauty of your ride. You pushed me away when your plate revealed the person behind the wheel. Go ahead and drive off with your playboy attitude. The once tempting apple seems to have a mealy core.

Besides, my poor little Honda could never keep up with you to continue my gawking. Sigh.

Coffee

From Toothpaste for Dinner

I enjoy having a cup of coffee on my way to work in the mornings. I have found that I'm not really after the caffeine that many people rely on to get started each day; it does not affect me. The reason that I have a cup of coffee each morning is because I enjoy the way that coffee tastes. Well, to be honest, I enjoy the way coffee tastes once I have fixed it.

Coffee, on its own, is nasty. I have never learned to drink a plain black cup of coffee, and I do not think that I will every try to gain that skill. Why should I? Cream is all that is required to transform bitter nastiness into decadent flavor. Using a flavored coffee increases the decadence and makes it almost sinfully delicious.

This morning I was thinking about how I normally like my coffee. When thinking of coffee along the lines of "I like my coffee like I like my women...", then my original preference for coffee can only be labeled as "Aryan". I like a little coffee with my cream, but no sugar. However, I've been trying to cut back on consuming unnecessary fat where I can. For the past month, my coffee has looked Ethiopian - dark and rich.

I have to admit that I love the novelty of drinking seemingly black coffee, but as I said before, I could never handle plain black coffee. My now Ethiopian coffee is not plain, but sweetened with Splenda's Flavors for Coffee in French Vanilla. This sweetener works for the most part, but it all depends on the strength of the coffee.

I tend to drink my coffee weaker than other people that I know - namely my husband. If the coffee is brewed too strongly, then the sweetener does not work. I have found that blueberry flavored coffee and the sweetener are absolutely delicious. However, I am starting to miss my cream.

This morning, I made a connection between coffee and truth during my commute to work. You might ask: How is that possible? Well, let me explain.

Truth can be good. Truth can be bitter. Truth can be doctored and served according to the recipients taste. Truth is truth, but everyone's truth is different. Each person's truth is a product of their view of what truth is supposed to be.

In my mind, you can replace truth with coffee in that paragraph and it will still be an accurate description. Truth and coffee, accepted and served differently all over the world.

Maybe I'm just being cynical, or perhaps my coffee is bitter this morning.

The Internet

This is completely unrelated to my commuting, but still relevant for me right now. A coworker of mine and her sister are great stick people artists. This is an animation that K made. It is hilarious!


Internet Forum Philosophy by ~Llyzabeth-Kythryn on deviantART

Enjoy!

BEYOU

I was struggling with my thoughts this morning. I was trying to shake off anger, hurt, and disappointment from this weekend, and deal with the fact that you can't make everyone happy. I decided on the way to work this morning that you have to be true to yourself, always seek and present the truth as best you can, and deal with the fact that pleasing everyone else and doing what is right are not always the same thing.

I believe in truth. I also know that the truth hurts, but a lie is poison that works over time with ever increasing pain, which will never kill you but can leave you in constant agony. Lies poison the ones that hear them, and the ones that tell them. Lies are the things that you say and the things that you omit. I, myself, must say I am a liar if I want to tell the truth. We are all liars. However, we can choose to change that and work to be more truthful. We can choose to tell the truth even if it gets us in trouble. You do not have to regret telling the truth.

I saw a personalized license plate that stuck with me this morning. It said, "BEYOU". It was gone before I could recognize the kind of car it was on, but I was glad I had time to read it. I needed that this morning.

A personalized license plate read on the way to work offered sound advice. Vanity license plates are supposed to tell you about the driver who created them; perhaps this driver is a therapist who is trying to help other commuters with a compelling message in two words - Be You.

Thank you, Mr./Mrs. Therapeutic Vanity Plate Owner. You have made a difference simply by driving past me on the interstate this morning. You are so much better than I am. I was thinking this morning that perhaps I should change my plate to DEALW/IT.

Weekends and Endings

In case you were wondering, I don't commute on the weekends. I'll only be posting during the work week.

Today is Sunday, the end of the weekend. Weekends always end too soon. I think that we should all rally for a three day weekend. Working can often be overrated when it gets in the way of living. It is a shame there are so many things that have to be done for us to just get by. Pulling from Hamlet's eloquence of thought: Simplicity, thy name is definitely not Human.

Name Calling

My train of thought is often sporadic. I'm a tangential thinker. One thought will remind me of something else, which leads immediately to a completely different line of thought that in turn brings up another issue, and so on and so forth until I can't remember how I even started thinking about the last thing I was thinking about. The structure of that last sentence slightly mirrors that thought process.

This morning I started thinking about babies that friends and people I know have had recently or are expecting to have soon. One of my favorite parts of thinking about babies are their names. I get very excited about names. I wrote down a list of six first and middle names for my future children when I was in middle school: Rowan Dade, Ian Lowry, Samuel Seamus, Gavin Ezekiel, Emma Jean, and Llivinia Anne. Granted that list is slightly out of date with my current taste in names, but I still make a list on occasion.

Thinking of names for future children, which lasted for at least ten minutes of my commute, led to thinking about my family. Thinking about my family was not a good succession from the previously happy line of thought.

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Family is a crazy thing. You can't choose them, and they can't choose you. Everyone is stuck in the same situation and must make the best of it. Some of us are better at adapting than others. I believe that often I fail at this. I constantly find myself stuck in the middle of things, and I don't know how to fix them or change them or make everyone happy. Maybe that is the lot of the youngest.

I screamed at my family on the way to work this morning. I experienced a period of inner road rage. I yelled at the pictures of them in my mind because I can never yell at them in person.

A coworker told me that while this may seem therapeutic it can actually lead to trouble with the law. She was on her way home from a holiday get together with family where she could not have politely said what she was really feeling. She had her own screaming session on the drive home, and a highway patrol officer eventually pulled her over. She had not been speeding or doing anything else wrong, but apparently several truck drivers had witness her release of rage and called her in to the highway patrol because they were worried about her.

I think that I will refrain from doing my yelling in the car for the future, especially as it will most likely be while in traffic. Rage, we need to get it out, but our outlets for it are so limited. Perhaps I just need to join a firing range.

Haunted by a Grapefruit

I often see interesting things on the side of the road while driving. My mother and I used to play a game when I was younger that involved things abandoned by the road. The game consisted of spotting something out of the ordinary in a ditch or median and saying aloud to the other person, "Hey, there's my shoe! (or shirt, or couch cushion, or bucket, ect.) I knew I'd left it somewhere!" I'm not sure why, but this was hilariously funny and we would both laugh. The more seriously and regretfully sounding you could say something like that, then the more fun the game became. Whoever thought of doing it first during a car ride was rewarded by the moment of confusion on the part of the other person as they hesitated a moment in belief of your words. To this day, I still play this game occasionally on road trips...even if I'm alone.

One morning this week I came to the intersection of a country road to a larger highway, where I turn onto the highway on my way to work. In the intersection that bridges the median between the two sides of the highway was a grapefruit. The fruit lay directly in front of my car and I couldn't help but stare at it. A grapefruit? Sitting in an intersection? How did it get lost? Where was it going? All of these questions raced through my mind as I stared at it. During that time I was also waiting on the oncoming traffic to allow me to turn onto the highway. When my chance came, I turned right as usual and then decided that I was going to do something ridiculous - I was going to turn around at the light just a short distance away and go back to pick up the grapefruit.

This may seem like a strange whim to act upon, but that is often how I operate. When I lived in Boston, I once found a tangerine in the snow on the sidewalk as I was walking home from work. I picked it up and ate it while I walked. It was delicious.

Though I had to laugh at myself for turning around to get a grapefruit stranded in the middle of a highway intersection, I was anxious that someone might run over it during the two minutes it took me to turn around. I worried that someone would see me pick it up and think I was insane. I wondered how I was going to pick it up without getting out of the car or running over it myself. I needant have bothered with all of these thoughts. When I got back to the intersection, it was gone.

It took me exactly two minutes to turn around at the light and make it back to the intersection where I had planned to make a U-turn and pick up my free grapefruit. I was actually shocked when I got back to the empty intersection. I quickly scanned the grassy median for my run away grapefruit and scanned both sides of the road for the crushed citrus victim of a careless driver. It simply wasn't there. It was gone.

I decided that as strange as I felt my impulse was to pick it up, someone else must have indulged the same whim and taken it before me. Oddly enough, I felt robbed! Who had stolen my grapefruit?!? Who had deprived me of a delicious addition to my PB&J lunch?!? After I got back on my route to work, I looked around at the other cars on the road and wondered who could have taken my grapefruit. It was silly, but I couldn't help it.

I know it wasn't just a figment of my imagination. Despite the ridiculousness of the whole situation, I regretted not getting out of the car, crossing the road, and picking it up before I turned onto the highway. Yes, I know I'm insane. But grapefruit are delicious!

INCOGNTO

I like to read vanity plates as I am commuting to work. It is a small form of enjoyment that connects me to the other people on the road who are slowing down my progress towards work or home. I, myself, have a vanity plate that I am confident reflects me personally. What, might you ask, does my plate say? Well, here it is -

This picture was taken by my wonderful wedding photographer, Thomas Geist, back in October when I married my childhood best friend. Why did he take such an interest in my license plate? I would like to tell you that it was because I was really early for my wedding, making it an oxymoron. I would like to say that it was just a funny image among many other gorgeous wedding images. I would like to lie about it, but the truth is right there is red - I was 40 minutes late to my wedding. I am constantly late to every social function that I attend. If I didn't have a flexible work schedule, then I would be late to work every day. I am always late.

My lateness is not from a lack of trying to be somewhere on time. I try very hard to be on time, but I seem to suffer from the inability to mentally gauge the amount of time it takes for me to get ready for an event, and the time required to travel to that event. To be fair, my late arrival to my own wedding was not my fault, but the retelling of it is more humorous when I get blamed, once again.

My vanity plate truthfully labels me for the other drivers on the road. While I was contemplating the creation of this blog on my way home from work yesterday, I saw another vanity plate that caught my attention. It read: INCOGNTO.

in-cog-ni-to [in-kog-nee-toh, in-kog-ni-toh]

–adjective

1.	having one's identity concealed, as under an assumed name, esp. to avoid notice or formal attentions.

incognito. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/incognito (accessed: April 22, 2009).

Mr. Silver Camry with your "Carolina is Obama country" bumper sticker, do you really think that you are avoiding notice when you have a vanity plate?

Vanity plates are meant to draw attention to the car that they are placed on, and to the person that drives that car. We pay extra money for these plates to stroke our own vanity by expressing ourselves in eight characters or less and thinking that people will read them and care what they say. I know - I think about it all the time. "Is the person behind me thinking that my license plate says I'm late because I only go five miles over the speed limit, not 10, while they are riding my rear end in an effort to express their frustration, which I will ignore on principle?"

From the definition of incognito above, I am struck by the ridicule I expect Mr. Silver Camry to be subject to on account of his witty, but inapplicable, word choice for his license plate. Honestly! We know you want our attention, but we really don't care who you are - you are in a silver Camry! Now, put that plate on a Lotus or Corvette (though I think they are ugly), and we might wonder who you are and what you do. The Camry actually fits in with the definition of incognito, your plea for attention with a vanity plate does not. In fact, while I laugh at the irony of it, I can't help but laugh at you.