Kaboom!

Right before leaving for work, there was a national weather warning for Tooele county for high winds. It warned people to stay away from windows and stay inside. Well, I can't imagine what that storm did to Tooele, but when it hit Sugarhouse it was a doozie. The power flickered on and off about 5 times in one hour. One time it was bad enough to shut down the whole system which takes 15 minutes to reboot, the rest it just shut down the gas pumps for 5 minutes or so. The unusual thing was that the customers were all understanding about the situation, not one of them yelled, screamed or demanded we fix the problem immediatly. Almost revives my faith in the human race. Almost.

Human / Vermin. There's a reason they sound so alike.

Don't get me wrong, I like people, individuals. It's just as a race we suck. There's a lot more lovable ones out there, like sharks and fire ants. At least they don't proclaim to be civilized, you know exactly what to expect from each and every one of them. We, on the other hand, claim to be the evolutionary apex of the planet, the only beings with a sense of self awareness and social conscious. Yet we scurry around this planet exhibiting behaviors that defy any sense of common good and instead display a healthy attitude of self entitlement. Yes, I ran some errands today.

.

I was gone for a whole 30 minutes today, and ran into 5 instances that were memorable. I get in line at Shopko behind a lady that is just finishing up her transaction. I've got one thing to buy, the cashier reaches for it as this lady's friend butts past me and hands him a video to ring up. Just as I'm thinking "Like, totally rude man, but it is only one thing", the lady pulls out her checkbook. Not cash. Not credit/debit card. But, these days, the slowest method of payment on God's green earth. The cashier, realizing that I am about to slam that lady's head down on her checkbook, which would probably jam her pen in her eye, causing a huge mess he would have to clean up, politely suggests that they can ring me up at the Customer Service counter. Disaster averted. On the way home, I almost get run over in front of the Shopko trying to get to my car, some lady decides she needs the whole lane for her minivan and is driving down the center of the isle in the parking lot, some guy in a BBA edition Ford Mega-Crew cab decides that the extra 30 feet his girlfriend/wife would have to walk from a real parking spot to the Nordstroms Rack might just give her a heart attack so he parks right in the lane of traffic (after all, WE can go around HIM), and finally as I'm pulling out of the parking space at Carl's Jr (halfway into the lane of traffic) some guy in another BBA pickup turns into the parking lot and figures that he shouldn't have to stop and tries to squeeze past me. All that within 30 minutes and 5 blocks of my house. Oh, and Writer, sorry about that huge, run on sentence, I was on a roll.

.

Well, thank you for letting me vent, I feel much better now. I think I'll go take a nap and get ready to face the hoardes again. Gotta be at Chevron by 3..........

Sometimes I like the human race.

Ok, so usually after a shift at the Chevron my posts here sound like I would rather run off to the Yukon and never see another human being again. That's because it's a lot easier to be funny, or make fun of, rude, stupid and obnoxious people. Making fun of all the decent people really wouldn't be funny and would make me look like a real moron. Plus there's no anger at nice people that needs venting. Anyway, the rest of this post is dedicated to those people who go through life trying to improve the day of the people they interact with. Like the guy who sounded incredibly sincere when he thanked me for helping him. And the couple that, instead of pocketing the $5 bill that was dropped on the ground, chased the guy to give him back his $5. Anyway, I just figured that once in a while I ought to point out that, for the most part, I really do think the human race is ok.

Genetic Sludge

It never ceases to amaze me how many people there are that are so much better human beings than I am that they deserve to be able to ignore the rules by which I must live. From the superior human being in the Toyota Land Cruiser to those in the picture here. As you can see, it does not matter that the park service is trying to get the pavilion ready for this season, these people wanted to eat lunch there TODAY! And if they push the caution tape up high enough that they don't even have to duck under it, then it's not really there, is it? So now it is entirely possible that they have undone all or some of the work that the park service was trying to protect, and it will have to be re-done, at your and my expense. I've got a name for them, and it rhymes with "grass poles". Same with Mr. Toyota at Foothill Village yesterday. He's behind me in the parking garage as I try to pull the LTD into a stall, and of course it doesn't fit the first time. So, rather than wait the extra 45 seconds, he pulls behind me to go around - as I'm backing up. Good thing I was looking or his $40,000 SUV would have been several inches thinner, and I would have had to brush off my back bumper. Except that it would have been my insurance that paid to fix his POS, because it would have been me that hit him. Ahhhh, if life were fair the people in the picture would get food poisoning, the Toyota would develop dry rot and I'd win the lottery.

Just when you'd decided the human race sucks......

First of all - Happy Cinco De Mayo...

Danny calls me the other day and asks if I'd be willing to help him demolish his mother-in-law's bathroom if she paid us. The first thing out of my mouth was "pay us? what for?" We settled on lunch and the fun of demolishing a bathroom. So today Danny, Alex and I ripped out the whole bathroom and cleaned up (that's why she had to make us dinner, if we hadn't had to clean up we woulda had to pay her.)

So Danny, Josh and I head out to the dump and while we're cleaning the trash out of the trailer, one of the pieces of the toilet (somehow it got broken going into the trailer, can't imagine how that happened), with a nice jagged end decides to slice the hell out of my thumb. Nice and deep, blood all over the place. I'm jumping around holding my thumb, putting pressure on it to stop the bleeding and the lady next to us runs over to her Suburban, gets out her first aid kit and calls me over. Cleans it, and wraps it all up. It stops bleeding, as long as I'm holding it tightly, so Danny and I decide he should finish cleaning out the trailer and then we'd head out to the Insta-Care right by my house and get it stitched up. So, I'm there holding my thumb above my head and Danny is busting butt to get the trailer cleaned out when the husband from next to us comes over and helps Danny finish with the trailer. The wife then comes over and checks the thumb again and even helps me get myself buckled into my seat while danny packs up the tarp and gets us ready to go. Just when I was developing a serious distaste for the entire human race.........

Josh was cute at the Insta-Care. You could tell that he was really interested in what was going on, and at the same time, kinda scared of the whole thing. He'd ask his dad to bring him over and let him sdee, look for 5 seconds and then want to go sit back down, did that 5 or 6 times. Wanna see, dont' wanna see. So, dozen and a half stiches later and we're out of there. Thumb's still numb, just waiting until it's all thawed out and I can feel the pain......