I have been informed that there was a thumbs-up. 
A very good sign indeed!
Okay, that’s enough happy-touchy-feely bullshit. Back to whining!
Attention, people who put up those “Lane closed ahead. Merge left/right” signs at construction sites:
Let’s put those up BEFORE the lane closure, shall we? This sort of communication does not work well as an afterthought.
THUMBS UP ! ! ! YAY ! ! !
Ehr, actually, Brits are about a zillion times more likely to call fútbol soccer as anybody else in the world except for those other countries which play rubgy varieties. Given that PGW’s stories are set about 100 years ago, before the popularity of the kind of football that’s played with your feet exploded, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that word in the original.
Glad to hear your friend’s doing better, SFG.
I have to take back part of my previous rant - I was still able to just walk in and not wait too long for my bloodwork (about 45 minutes - not too bad).
Glad to hear about your friend, SFG!
Yesterday was my birthday, and it was mighty fine. In fact, my entire three day weekend was pretty darned good.
Then I wake up at 1:45am with an anxiety attack about having to go in today. Interestingly, this is the first time I have dreamt about it before waking to it.
And then proceed to have a BAD DAY. Not horrifically bad, but bad enough. Had a bit of a fight with my boss because he kept hammering at something that I thought was an “address it and walk away” kind of thing. Ended up in a meeting with him and his boss about it, but walked away without any kind of difficulty, primarily because he didn’t have a lot of defense against “About the fourth or fifth time you ask the same question or raise the same point, I’m going to get seriously tired of it and tell you to stop.”
Ended the bad day with a bad call.
Driving home I got hit from behind while waiting at a red light, someone else in front of me, having been sitting there for about 90 seconds. Got out of the car pretty hot. Walked to the back of the car.
No damage.
Ok, maybe there was one scratch. But there are other, older scratches on my POS 16 year old car.
But no dent, no cracks in the plastic, nada. I was purely astonished and stood there checking it out in detail, pulling on the hatch to see if it was ok, etc. Not a fucking thing. The other driver was a middle aged black woman who immediately admitted fault, she was trying to put her purse down, it slipped out of her hands onto the floor and when she bent down to grab it, her foot came off the brakes. She kept asking me if I wanted to file a claim. Nope. I’m good. I’m astonished there is no damage, I expected the plastic rear bumper to be destroyed, but…nothing. So I said I was good, shook her hand and went on my merry way.
Feel free to complain to the City (or County or State DOT, depending on who owns the road), even if they’re not the ones doing the work. The City (or County . . .) issues encroachment permits to anyone working in their streets and the permits require proper signage, usually according to the WATCH* Manual. If the signs are improper, the City can close the work and/or impose fines.
Not only is the Lane Closed sign supposed to be ‘A’ feet in front of the beginning of the cone taper for the merge (where ‘A’ changes from 125 ft for 25 mph roads to 780 ft for 65 mph roads), but there’s also supposed to be a Road Work Ahead sign ‘A’ feet before that.
If the Advanced Warning Area (A + A for a merge) is insufficient for the Actual Speed of vehicles on that street, then it’s an unsafe condition that the City will want to correct (because insufficient signage + accident = lawsuit). It’s usually some section of the Public Works Department that would act on the complaint. Note the location, see if you can tell who’s doing the work, then call and let your tax dollars work for you.
*Work Area Traffic Control Handbook. It’s a 50 page booklet that fits in a pocket. There’s no excuse for not having one on-site. They’re cheap.
You didn’t get her information? The things people decide and say on the scene of an accident have a bad habit of changing when people get home and talk to other people who have big ideas about what your insurance should pay.
Glad to hear you and your car were okay, though.
ETA: Happy birthday, too! 
So this isn’t something I really should complain about but I’m getting seriously frustrated.
Right before I moved to central Illinois for my new job, which I started Monday after a week of training last week, the water treatment facility got flooded the city was put under a boil order. That was two weeks ago and the problem still isn’t fixed. I know that it is a big project to fix all the machinery that got damaged by the flood but I want to be able to use my water. For a while, they told us not to even shower in the running water. I work for a Nestle plant and they have been working night and day to figure something out so that they can continue running. Right now, they have been buying tankers of water from the next town over.
But all I really want is a clean shower. Just one. I don’t want to have to bathe in cold water that I put in the bathtub one pot at a time anymore. (It is a very small pot.)
slalexan, I realize you’re conditioned to “showers, or if not possible a full-body bath”, and I do hope you get your showers back soon, but in the meantime may I suggest that most people find sponge baths less unpleasant than a full-body dunk into water that’s gotten cold from filling the tub one small pot at a time? Less waste of energy and slalexanpower, too.
Every fucking morning.
See, I’ve got a pretty good morning routine on weekdays. Between 7:30 and 7:45, leave the house, turn left onto the Busy Street. Change to the rightmost lane. Maybe drop a book off at the library dropbox, hit Starbucks, then hit the freeway. Busy Street’s rightmost lane is No Parking 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. It’s all good. But lately…
Every fucking morning, two houses before the library, there it is. A parked car. At 7:45-ish. Parked right under the No Parking 7:00 am. to 9:00 a.m. sign. Not always the same car, sometimes two cars, but always in front of the same house, right under the same sign. Which makes Busy Street a lot less easy to travel during morning rush hour, you idiots! Every fucking morning…
I’m in a bar. I give my card to the bartender for a tab which rings up at the end of the night. I order my “last” drink and direct her to “tab me out.” She does so. While finishing my “last” drink, a friend comes in. I decide to stay for a bit longer. I order another drink and again pay with the card. I order another drink and pay with the card. I order a another drink and pay with the card, but this time the bartender admonishes me: You know, the owner pays 3% every time you use your card.
You know (I thought, didn’t say), the owner makes 97% every time I use my card. He pays the same cost whether I use my card 100 times for $1 or one time for $100. Yes, you do more work if I use it 100 times, but that wasn’t your argument.
Stupid maths.
I guess I wasn’t clear. It is a sponge bath but my bath tub is the only vessel I have, other than my kitchen sink, bigger than my sauce pan. I don’t want to use my kitchen sink because my roof is leaking over the sink and its a little yucky there still.
Dear Local Police,
Did you know that you can make good money by arriving at nnn Busy Street every morning just after 7am? That would be because there are one or two cars parked in front of that house every day when I drive past it at 7:45am, parked right under the No Parking 7am to 9am sign. It isn’t always the same car, so I’m sure it won’t be resolved with a single ticket.
Have at it, and make our streets a little safer!
Yours truly,
A daily commuter.
Today sucks.
First, I got up feeling kind of sick, which is bullshit because I never get sick. I kept snoozing over and over because I really didn’t feel like getting out of bed. Mistake #1. I wasn’t feeling coughy or vomitty, but I awoke feeling a bit weak and lightheaded, but shrugged it off and shoved a small breakfast into my face. Mistake #2 taking time to eat breakfast when I wasn’t even hungry.
After getting out of the shower, I realized that I have wasted a lot time dicking around, and snoozing, and eating breakfast. I started rushing and thinking I was making good time until I checked the clock and realized I was not. Fuck me. So I grabbed my shit, scurried out the door, and decided I’d put the finishing touches on my face on the train.
As I’m about a block away, I noticed the train pulling up, and ran like hell to catch it. Ordinarily I wouldn’t do this, but the Metra train here is bullshit, and only runs something like every 20 or 30 minutes during rush hour. Weekend times are so infrequent, they may as well not even run the damn train at all. Mistake #3 running. It’s fucking hot, and I missed the damn thing anyway. I got to the doors the very moment the machine chimed “Doors are closing.” I put my hand in between the doors, hoping that would stop them from shutting in my face, to no avail. Fuck this.
I ended up not being obscenely late, but decided nonetheless I was done with the Metra. I don’t care if the train has coat hangers. One, the frequency with those things run is abysmal; Two, gods forbid your schedule change one day, and you’re stuck hanging around Union Station for 45 minutes because they’ve decided to fuck the local stops, so you either have to wait, or get home some other way; Three, fuck Union Station. The complete lack of urgency there is astounding. How can people at a train station have no apparent place to go? And why is everyone so confused all the time? Four, for an extra $20, I can get a monthly CTA card which will take me somewhere other than downtown, and runs more than once every 5th of the month. So I take my irritated ass down to CTA to get an unlimited ChiPlus card, which ends up taking almost all of my lunch break. Mistake #4. In hindsight, I should have just gone to CVS and bought a regular paper monthly pass. I’m not sure why I didn’t. I dunno, those little passes just seem so flimsy. I wanted a plastic card.
By the time I’m done waiting in line for CTA employees who were deliberately letting the line grow longer, and almost spitefully committing every action as slowly as humanly possible, I didn’t have time to sit down and eat lunch, so I grabbed a sandwich that I stuffed into my maw on the way back to the office. I ended up dropping a pepper, and instead of it falling to the ground, it planted itself squarely onto Louise, my left tit, and left a big grease stain. Now more people I pass on the street are staring at my chest than usual, only adding to my crankiness.
So yes, this long-ass rant essentially boils down to me missing my train and being 10 min late to work, and there being a grease stain on my shirt, but goddamn it, these petty grievances, well, aggrieve me! Arrgh!
It had to be said. I feel better now.
You can’t read your own fucking handwriting? Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?? What the fucking fuck is fucking wrong with you, you stupid fucking cunt? You fucking wrote the fucking shit! If you can’t fucking read your own fucking handwriting, how do you tie your own fucking shoes in the fucking morning?? FUCK
(if I didn’t have a 4 day weekend coming in 2 hours, I might have just quit my job)
raises hand tentatively I can’t read my own handwriting. However I compensate by typing everything thus making my handwriting (when I’m forced to use it) even worse.
Just out of curiosity, what’s the right one’s name?
ETA: “Thelma” just popped into my head…
I am not a mean-spirited person. I’ve never hit anyone in my life. But if you (or anyone) had said that in my presence just now, instead of just online, I would have punched you in the face. :3
Clearly, anger management class is in order. Or, a large rum and coke when I get home. It’s cheaper!
Sometimes I can’t read my own writing. 
You got it.