{"id":239,"date":"2006-05-01T13:54:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-01T13:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/01\/mucus-on-the-highway-getting-gas-stupid-little-girl\/"},"modified":"2006-05-01T13:54:00","modified_gmt":"2006-05-01T13:54:00","slug":"mucus-on-the-highway-getting-gas-stupid-little-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/01\/mucus-on-the-highway-getting-gas-stupid-little-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"mucus, on the highway, getting gas, stupid little girl"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend I was sick.    Headache, sore throat, sinus pressure &#8211; and mucus.    More mucus than I realized a human being could produce.   It was terrible.   I filled a small trash can with klennex in no time at all.   So, I&#8217;ve been jamming on Tylonal cold medicine most of the time and I think I&#8217;m getting better.   Maybe.<\/p>\n<p>I was driving on the highway on Friday and the far left lane &#8211; where I&#8217;m at &#8211; suddenly comes to a halt.  I swear for a bit &#8211; but hold my ground in the hope that it will eventually clear instead of creating a problem in the next lane over by everyone moving to it.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, after much stop and go &#8211; I see a truck with one of those &#8212;&#8212;>   signs on the back.  Indicating that we should all get over.   With some difficulty, I do.   We finally go past the obstrutction and find that it&#8217;s&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>1. The truck with the arrow, parked in the lane with the driver in the cab.<br \/>2. Two police officers standing next to their cruisers.    Unhurt.   Just chatting.<br \/>3. One motorcycle, upright and undamaged.  The rider was just getting on the bike, he was unhurt.   His helmet was on resting on the ground, undamaged.<br \/>4. One woman, also unhurt.  Walking over to her undamaged car.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I clearly don&#8217;t have the whole story.   But at this point &#8211; everyone that was still there at the scene should have gotten away from there and freed up traffice &#8211; instead of standing there chatting.   You want to chat?   Go to Starbucks.<\/p>\n<p>After this incident, I&#8217;m near my destination, but running on fumes.  I pull into a gas station and see two pumps open on the right side of my car.  I started to pull forward to go to the far one &#8211; as a courtesy &#8211; but notive a kid standing on the far pump&#8217;s island.  He&#8217;s trying to direct a woman in a huge car to that pump &#8211; she&#8217;s making a wide loop to bring the left side of her car into postion.   Now, I&#8217;ve never needed anyone to direct me to a pump to fill my car &#8211; but even with help she wasn&#8217;t doing a good job.   I backed up to get away from her to the point where I wasn&#8217;t sure I could reach my gas tank at the second pump.   She ended up vaguely near the pump, but mostly out in the isle.  The kid proceeded to pump the gas.   I pumped my gas and got out of there well before they were done.  <\/p>\n<p>Later that weekend I find myself traveling down a residental alleyway, one lane, and encounter a little girl on a bike.    I&#8217;ve had dealings with this little girl before and based on her previous behavior I know her to be&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>1. Arrogant<br \/>2. Foolishly unobservant<br \/>3. Annoying<br \/>4. Stupid<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s on her little pink bike, riding right down the middle of the alley, coming right towards me.  I slow down to a crawl and wait for her to get out of the way.   I reach the cross intersection before she does, and I don&#8217;t deviate from my course.     Still, she keeps coming.   I slow even further,  prepared to stop and let her hit my car.   Might be funny.<\/p>\n<p>At the last possible moment, she darts into a single car parking space at the back of the building.   I figure she&#8217;s going to wait until I get past &#8211; which would be the sensible thing to do.   Instead, she turns around and darts right back into my way &#8211; now headed away from me but still in the way.<\/p>\n<p>What had been a game of chickcn or some kind of mind game has turned into  rampant stupidity.   As she pedels along she keeps looking back to see:<\/p>\n<p>1. if I&#8217;m there.   Duh, it&#8217;s an alley, where am I going to go?<br \/>2. how close I am.    If she was worried about me hitting her, why did she get in front of me again?<\/p>\n<p>She reaches an intersection of a main street and, without looking, darts into traffic.   She looks back one last time as I turn onto the street and I raise my fingers to my forehead in the international &#8220;loser&#8221; symbol. <\/p>\n<p>We both survived the encounter &#8211; but I doubt either of us will be the same.<\/p>\n<p>Back to work&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img width='1' height='1' src='https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7938355-114649322442599078?l=approximatelyequalto.blogspot.com' alt='' \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This weekend I was sick. Headache, sore throat, sinus pressure &#8211; and mucus. More mucus than I realized a human being could produce. It was terrible. I filled a small trash can with klennex in no time at all. So, I&#8217;ve been jamming on Tylonal cold medicine most of the time and I think I&#8217;m [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}