Disgruntled

Last night, on my way home from work, I was making a right hand turn onto a four lane highway. The light had just turned green, and while I wasn’t “jumping the light”, neither was I allowing more than a split second elapse from the time the light turned green until the time my right foot had the pedal firmly depressed to the floor.

While I was in the process of accelerating, a kid in a Volkswagen beetle was in the process of attempting to make it through the yellow light before it turned red. He entered the intersection just an eensy, weensy bit too late to make the yellow though, and was in the process of blasting through the red light as I was accelerating into his lane.

The laws of physics being what they are, two vehicles cannot occupy the same lanes at the same time. (Actually, I’ve never really understood that. After all, if the most of what comprises atoms and molecules is nothing but empty space, then surely there’s room for one object to pass through the other object without disturbing anything too badly. But I digress.) I saw the kid blasting through the intersection, and immediately reacted by jerking the steering wheel hard to the right.

The kid sailed on past with room to spare. My back right wheel hit the curb with a rather sickening thud. I half expected my tire to blow out, but it didn’t, and I drove home. When I arrived, I was distracted by my neighbor Hoagie Shack Man, and forgot to check my tire before I went into the apartment. Bad move.

The Socialist decided to wash my car as a surprise to me shortly after I arrived home, and discovered that I’d scraped the heck out of my rim, and taken a big enough chunk out of my tire’s sidewall that the steel belt showed through. Why the tire didn’t blow is anyone’s guess. Once again I’m the recipient of pixie dust from the Luck Fairy, I guess.

I didn’t trust the tire to get me the full twenty miles to work this morning, though, so I stopped by a local tire place on the way in and got myself a new tire. Total cost for this little escapade was $85. I should have let the Volkswagen hit me. Then he’d have had to pay for everything.

*sigh* I will never understand men. Several weeks ago, I received an invitation to the opening of a new wireless telephone store in my area. They were inviting everyone with my brand of phone in for workshops, product demonstrations, and other PR stuff. They’re giving away free headsets, passes to a local museum, and other unspecified free prizes.

Is it a sales gimmick? Sure. Am I going to let that get in the way of me getting freebies? I don’t think so.

The timing works out well on this anyhow. My phone plan is up for renewal, and I want to see if there isn’t some way to cut down on my monthly charges while getting greater national coverage. I also got a coupon from my carrier in the mail that has some big discounts on new phones, and I wanted to get a look at those as well, to see if it was worth it to me to trade up.

Now I told The Socialist about this weeks ago, the same day I got the phone call. I mentioned it several times since then. It’s written on the kitchen calendar that I keep track of my doctor’s appointments and other miscellaneous events. He seemed uninterested at first, and then mentioned last week he might want to go too. Either was fine by me. Then, last night, he decided I’d get nothing worthwhile out of this, it’s too early, it will cut into our time together, and he doesn’t want me to go either.

Oh, he didn’t actually come out and say, “I don’t want you to go.” He just used what arguments he could think of to talk me out of it. He’s distressed because I made plans on Sunday that don’t include him, and now I’ve cut into tonight’s time to spend together. Not going with me on Sunday was his choice, I might add; he didn’t want to get up before noon, and my Sunday plans encompassed the morning hours. The way I see it, he had invitations to go tonight and to go Sunday. That he’s elected to do neither is fine, but to try to prevent me from doing it by putting a guilt trip on me is simply not fair.

It won’t work. I’m going anyhow.