We'll start with the road rage: as I've said before, drivers down here suck. Tailgating, cutting people off, last minute blinkers, and more commonly, lack of blinkers. Now, I may be biased because I tend to be a defensive driver, but trust me, they aren't good (though already I'm getting used to it). Generally, I'm not one to express my road rage tendencies to others, I don't give people the finger or yell at them or creepily following them, I usually just make comments about their poor driving, and occasionally say a few choice words directed towards them, but not so they actually know that I said such words. I would never ever do what this one guy did to me. Imagine this: It's 7:33am and I'm driving to work, singing to the music, cruising in the right lane. Up ahead there are flashing lights from a truck and cars ahead of me are trying to get into the (busy) left lane. I find a way into the left lane as cars continue to whiz past me in the right lane, which has cones closing it. Now, usually I try to be nice and let at least one car in to be nice (because, hey, who doesn't appreciate someone letting them in instead of sitting for 5 minutes waiting for an opening?) but I refuse to let in the folks who buzz to the front of the soon to be closed lane only to expect to be let in to the already bumper to bumper lane. Seriously, I feel no guilt what-so-ever not letting those people in. Why should I? The lane was clearly closing (cones, flashing lights, every other car ahead of you in your lane moving over). So naturally, I continue to follow close to the car in front of me so this moron doesn't get in. Things we going good, my plan was working, the car to my right wasn't going to get it, he accepted it and just sat there, until I was right next to him, then he decided that I was going to let him in. Considering he almost side-swiped me to get in, I naturally honked my horn at him. As we sit at a stand still, I see the driver's side window roll down and out pops the upper 1/4 of a person, who looks back at me and yells some obscenity, probably because I honked. Of course, then I get even more upset (windows up, don't worry). And we both drive away. So anyways, I continue to make my way to work, still upset at the nerve of that guy to blame me (I know, I know, I could have let him in and I didn't have to honk, whatever) and I could help but think about the fact that I was rather lucky that the guy only yelled something at me. These days you hear about the people with serious road rage who follow people or even shoot people all because they were honked at or because someone shut them off. Am I sorry I honked? No, but this is a good reminder that we should all pick our battles carefully, because you never know if you might piss off the wrong person at the wrong time, and next time they won't just be yelling curse words.
Next, I'm sure what many of you may be most curious about, the dust storm, or what some people are calling it, the haboob (check it out on wikipedia). In case you didn't hear, a major dust storm hit the city and the surrounding area on Tuesday night. Some of the numbers thrown out there by the local media/weather channel are this: it peaked at about 1-2 miles high, as anywhere from 50-100 miles wide and had winds reach the speed of 60mph, which from what I hear (don't quote me on this) is about the wind speed of a category 1 hurricane. If you haven't seen pictures, here's one for you:
To be honest, I didn't know what happened until the news the next morning. I knew a storm had passed through that night, but having never been in a dust storm before, I didn't realize what it was. I was in my apartment that night (luckily) and I heard a weird noise. After realizing it was coming from outside, I took a look out of my living room window and saw that it was super windy outside. The small trees where blowing like crazy and it was kind of hazy. Naturally, I thought it was a rain storm, because that's all I've ever seen. Plus, earlier that evening, on my way home, I saw a big storm cloud (rain storm) in the distance. I checked outside a couple more times, on my last check a little while later, it was calm and looked like the ground was wet. Imagine how surprised I was to find out the next morning that I was in one of the largest dust storms that the locals can even remember. Again, luckily, I didn't get the brunt of it where I live. My car is still dirty from the storm, it's nothing compared to what other people's cars looked like (people who live on the East side of the Valley... I live on the West). Even on Friday (remember, the storm was on Thursday) while looking out my window at work, the mountains in the distance were still hard to see, when I can normally see them clearly, that's how much dust particles were still in the air. To top of the weather stories, last Saturday we broke the single day heat record. It was the hottest day in about 10 years. The airport downtown recorded about 118F while the city near me (I'm closer to there than I am to downtown) reached a whopping 123F. Thank goodness for AC.
In other news (exciting news!), I'm an Auntie again! (That makes three!) I got the call late Thursday my time. My brother and sister-in-law had a beautiful little girl, whom they named Lexi. I can't tell you how excited I am. The first two kids are hilarious and absolutely amazing, and I'm sure this will be too! Ahh, I can't even begin to explain how excited I am! And I can't wait to see pictures.
Now on to work news... since this is getting lengthy, I'll just give a quick summary of what went on this week. I will be learning (soon, hopefully) more technology stuff, including Microsoft Access (I started a bit on this), SPSS (a few things at least), and GIS. Although it may not sound cool to some people, I'm actually excited to learn how to use these programs and join in on the nerdiness (right Anna?). It also sounds like I'll be starting on a project soon, which is exciting. I'm beginning to socialize a little more at work too, which is nice. On Thursday they had a little going away party for someone who works in my bureau, which was a good opportunity to chat it up with others, including the Chief of the bureau. Did she really want to chat with me? Maybe not, but if she didn't she was still a good sport about it. While some people may not feel comfortable initiating conversation with someone in her position, I say, why not? It shows initiative, and we work together so we should be able to talk, right? Besides, we actually had some stuff in common, including geography stuff (she's from WI too!), so that was pretty neat. Next week I have a 1-on-1 meeting with my boss to discuss what will be expected on me, etc, etc. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. Despite knowing that they knew very well my work history and experience history when they hired me, I still can't help but feel that I might not live up to their expectations... at least right away. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
To everyone back home, I hope things are going well for all of you. Keep me updated on what's going on!
Congrats on being an aunt!
ReplyDeleteI would have done exactly what you did in that traffic situation. I HATE when people try to sneak in that way, and I refuse to let them in. People are just jerks.
I just got back from my cruise, and I'm posting pictures now so you should check them out!