A few days ago I had to leave a nasty note on someone’s car in the university parking deck for the anti-social crime of taking up two spaces and not even displaying the proper permit. Just this morning I had to unleash my middle finger and arsenal of cuss words (which primarily involved a hearty “fuck you”) while on an otherwise idyllic bike ride around town. What is this world coming to, I ASK YOU.
Can I just take a moment to tell you about one of the idiots I encountered on this morning’s ride? I was coming down the little two-lane road that leads to my house and preparing to make a left turn into my parking area. I was going slowly and signaling my turn, waiting for two cars in the left lane to pass by before I did so. You know, your basic left turn scenario. So one of the two oncoming cars decides to swerve into his left lane (in other words, he crossed the double yellow lines into my lane; in still other words, he was driving up the wrong goddamned side of the road). Meanwhile, the car behind him is still headed my way. So there are now two cars, one in each lane, headed for me and there is nowhere for me to go. What the everloving what. So I just stopped and got off my bike and stood there, and they both stopped, and I gave the bird and shouted my “fuck you” over top of whatever the lane-crossing, law-breaking, hazardous idiot was trying to say. I couldn’t understand whatever he was yelling at me and it’s just as well because it did NOT sound very courteous or mannerly.
In other news, I rode 21 miles today, a personal distance record for this injury-prone year. It felt pretty great.
Finally, a question: do you pay with cash at the store, occasionally? Is this practice becoming as annoyingly antiquated as paying by check? If I pay with cash, am I now viewed as the old lady who refuses to learn the more efficient technologies of modern life?
I often use cash as a way of budgeting my small day-to-day expenses, so I find myself paying with cash when I’m buying an afternoon coffee or snack or some such. I also occasionally use it at the grocery store when I’m just picking up a few things. I have noticed that whenever I do this, the pimple-faced teenagers working the cash register tend to give me a confused up-and-down stare, and it tends to take them about five minutes to figure out how to input the amount of money I gave them into the register, see the amount of change due, and count it back to me. Is this no longer a basic cashier skill? Why back in my day, when I worked cash-till jobs in high school and college, we really knew how to count change. It was a basic life skill.
I swear. Kids these days. Do they even learn anything anymore? Now get off my lawn.
Raveling Out 
It must be in the air. I had to honk my horn twice today ON THE INTERSTATE at asshats drifting into my lane as I tried to pass them.
Then, when I finally got onto the two-lane highway back to the valley, after being the last car through a license check, the state trooper was following me, & some idiot was driving towards me straddling the yellow line. And he was in NO hurry to get into his own lane. I had to put on the brakes, hard. The good thing though was that the straddling asshat hadn’t noticed the state trooper behind me, who had his lights on before dude even passed us & swooped around to pull him over immediately. It’s perfectly possible dude had had too much to drink, but more often than not, I think drivers around here are just fucking lazy. Or they think the yellow lines are optional. Either way, I was very glad, for once, to have a state trooper behind me & see him whip into action. ASSHATS, I tell you!
SERIOUSLY. Stay in your lane, people, it’s the most BASIC RULE.
A couple of days ago, on our way to dinner in the downtown area of Ft. Collins some jackhole stopped his car in the middle of the goddamned main thoroughfare for the purpose of waiting on somebody to pull out of a parking spot. This would have been an egregious enough act of douchfuckery all on its own, but compounding his fuckwittitude he was in the left of two lanes awaiting a curbside spot. Further, he PUT HIS CAR IN FUCKING REVERSE and tried to back up several yards to await the spot. Several yards between his car and mine, making it impossible to get around him. The shit icing on the turd cake – his car was stopped in such a way that the dude exiting this coveted spot could not get out. I’m telling you, one legal murder a year…
HA. My personal favorite parking lot behavior is when people insist (INSIST!) on backing into a space, but it’s too difficult, and it takes them like five minutes, and everyone is stuck waiting because they’re blocking the entire aisle! HMPFFFFF.