Pickles & Dimes

You know how sometimes during rush hour, traffic gets backed up into the intersection even though the light is still green? Yeah, that happens sometimes. It blows, you wait, eventually you move on. (Or blog about it.)

But here’s what I don’t get and what drives me INSANE:

There’s always ONE car that will still pull into the intersection while the light is green, even if there’s nowhere to go and no hope of making it to the other side before the light changes, like this (note the red car):

I saw this happen yesterday. And do you know what the woman in the red car (OH YES, it was a WOMAN; it’s ALWAYS a woman, dammit) did?

She honked. At the car in front of her.

A car that scooted 3 inches forward because that’s all the room they had.

Which still left her stupid ass smack in the middle of the intersection.

Which is where she was still sitting when the light turned green for the cars going the other direction. You don’t know how badly I was hoping for someone to ram her car so it would burst into giant, orangey flames. Stupid Minnesota Nice!

BUT THEN, she honked AGAIN. And made some sort of angry gesture at the guy in front of her, who was well out of the way of other cars, mind you. But apparently it was HIS fault that she was a selfish tool.

The kicker? She could’ve used the second lane next to the guy because it was WIDE OPEN.

Lesson of the day: DO NOT DO.

This was the first masthead for the new template. Bigger, badder, spacier!

I love coming up with new ideas for mastheads. In fact, it’s the #1 way I spend my time in useless work meetings: jotting down possible ideas. Anyway, I’ve wanted a space theme since Day 1, but hadn’t really figured out how to do it.

But once I found the spaceship image, everything just clicked. I got the planet image off one of our image CDs at work and made the starry background myself. The typeface is “Space Age” from Dafont and I created the spinning vortex with a brush from the “cosmic force” pack from Brusheezy.

Probably one of my favorites (I say that EVERY time, I think).

Also, I think I’m going to post these closer to the beginning on the month, instead of at the end. Just makes sense that way, right?

EDITED TO ADD: Feel free to recommend masthead ideas (TESSIE) - I’m always looking for inspiration!

Despite the still chilly-ish weather, I’m in a summer mindset. Summer equals walks around the neighborhood, or if we have time, walks along the Mississippi River.

I love wandering down dead-end streets holding Jason’s hand and admiring everyone’s landscaping. I’m compelled to hold a running commentary of the flowers I see (”They’ve got peonies! That’s a whole YARD full of hostas! How come their daylilies are already blooming?”) while pointing out wildlife like a seasoned guide: (”Cardinal. ‘Nother cardinal. Bunny. Squirrel. Deer. Baby fox! Mole* that is creepily staggering down the street in broad daylight.”).

We walk past sidewalk drains and listen to the white water rapids rushing below. I cannot identify bird calls for the life of me. Baby birds peer quizzically at us from the street, still sporting their old man tufts, their mothers hovering nearby.

The sun sprinkles through the tall maples to splash onto the street, while lazy lawnmowers buzz in the air and the tck-tck-tck of sprinklers greets us on every block. Tumbleweeds of pollen float in the air and collect in piles along the curb. The temperature is perfect, neither warm nor cold. The flap-flap sounds of our sandals follow us like baby ducklings. People wave at us; we wave back.

We return home to our neighbor’s apple tree, which looked like this a few days ago:

Then we stop by a large hedge of lilacs to stock our vase at home:

And then we look forward to doing more of this during our next camping trip:

Aw, summer. It’s about damn time you got here.

* We saw a mole last summer walking unsteadily down the middle of the street one morning. It probably had rabies.

We have dimmer switches in our bathrooms at work, which makes it seem like I work in a gigolo’s apartment. We also have a mystery coworker who, once they exit the bathroom, dims the lights and shuts the door so it appears to be closed. They don’t shut the door all the way, mind you, or shut the lights off because that would be normal behavior. Instead, they make it so I have to slowly inch the door open while squinting in the dim light and scrabbling frantically for the switch, fully expecting to find either an ax-wielding madman around the corner or a dead hooker slumped over the toilet with a needle in her arm. God.

I had a dream last night that I was cleaning out our shower drain, which was full of lots of hair (realistic so far), placemats (?) and a large camera lens (the kind sports photographers use). Then I pulled up the drain and peered directly into the sewer, where I was greeted with the sight of giant rats and an angry BOBCAT. I believe that was around the same time Sunny jumped onto my chest and my heart fell out of my ear.

Our weather guy keeps reiterating that our temps are “below normal.” He’s got about two more weeks before I start rejecting his logic about “cold air pushing down from Canada” and “pockets of air trapped over Minnesota” before I start demanding to hear about “heat waves” and “record-breaking highs.”

I am 25 games down in our annual cribbage tournament. You might say it’s still early in the year and I shouldn’t panic, right? Well, how about if I tell you that in January, I was 17 games ahead? That is a 42 game swing. Needless to say, if you have any cribbage-winning tips, send them my way.

You know those lists in magazines where they tell you about “SUPERHERO FOODS” or “FOODS THAT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE!!!”? Yeah, I don’t like any of them. Brazil nuts - gross. Avocados - no way. Broccoli and cauliflower - you’re kidding, right? The Pork Commission needs to publish a study claiming bacon reduces crabbiness or something just so I can feel justified eating it.