• The polite traffic jack-ass

    Cut someone off in traffic, poke your head out the window, smile and wave… what’s up with that?

    One: the gentleman was a vistor from New York City, understood my eye contact as a stipulation to yield, interpreted car lengths like we humans interpret dog years, and was thanking me for my generous nature.
    Two: the gentleman knew he had cut me off and was thanking me for not making his car more compact.
    Three: the gentleman was no gentleman at all, knew he had cut me off, and was rubbing salt in the wound.

    You must decide.
    (Not really.)

  • Life after death

    Someone once told me that funerals are for the living not for the dead, and that pretty much sums up yesterday… a day that the living did their best to keep on living. Pity me not dear reader, for my loss was a pittance compared to my wife’s family. My role in this was to play back up… a role that I’m not particularly well suited, so you can imagine I was a big help.

    As the day unfolded I watched people make the plans we all figure on making one day; a day that often seems to come a few “one days” sooner than we would like. I watched my wife try to fill three different roles. Mostly I just watched. It was a day to rue my tendency towards listening over action, and a general inability to make things better.

    No, don’t pity me dear reader. I’ve got plenty for myself. Think to those who have tried, and those who have died. Think to those who must continue to live, with memories of a shared life, sustained with the help of our love.

  • Get your freak on

    Imagine sitting on a plane as it barrels down the runway, approaching the speed necessary to leap into the air… and the pilot hits the breaks. As it turns out our pilot was asked to abort our take-off due to some bad weather near the airport. When the plane came to the proverbial “full and complete stop,” I heard at least fifty people take a breath. Sounds like a good time, eh?

    So here we are, deplaned and back in the airport, waiting for the weather to pass.