Muscling in on Subaru Territory.

In case you haven't heard the joke, it goes like this: 

How do you clear out a Starbucks?  Walk in and yell "Someone's stealing a kayak off the roof of a Subaru out there."

  Well, as you (hopefully) can see, someone has chosen to cross into the elitist territory of Subaru owners. That's your basic 2-door speck.  I think it's actually a Daihatsu.  A 20 year old Daihatsu.  In used-and-abused shape.  And, ok, it's a canoe.  But still, someone is trying to delve into territory that has been reserved for the yuppie-Subaru crowd.  And although they have every right to, I still think it looks pretty damn funny.

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Return of Bicycle-bum.  The guy who tried to make me feel guilty for embarassing him in front of his friend (which happens to be the same lie he's told several people when asked to leave our customers alone) when I asked him to leave the Chevron customers alone was back.  He returned on the 4th of July, in the evening, when all but 2 of the staff were at the store*.  The manager, who also happens to be the owner's son-in-law, went out to tell him that he is not allowed to bother customers in our parking lot.  Bicycle-bum got very angry, called him a whole bunch of names, questioned the ligitimacy of his bloodlines and in returned was asked to never come back to the store.  Which means that if he tries to pull that line on me again, I can just come back with "That's all fine, but the manager told you that you were not allowed on the property at all."

*the 4th of July fireworks are in the park right across the street from the Chevron I work at.  Every year tens of thousands of people show up for them, and a good percentage come into our store.  We have to have 2 people at the door just to limit the number of people coming in at a time, and to do their best to keep things from walking out without being paid for.  We had to bag everything, even if they just got a pack of gum, because the people at the door were not letting anything out the door that was not in a bag.  I spent 4 hours at the cash register ringing up person, after person, after person.  My cash register, which was open from 2:00 in the afternoon until 1:00 in the morning, logged in almost $4,500 in sales - that's seperate from the gas sales.  And think about it, the average inside sale ranges from $1 up to $30. That's a lot of people.  (Um, anyone out there thinking that's a gold mine waiting to be robbed - we never do anywhere near that any night other than the 4th, and chances are good, at a 4th of July party in Utah, at least one of the 30 people in the building at any one time has a concealed carry gun permit.  Not a smart career move.)

Whew!

The week is over.  And I survived, barely.  I told 3rd period that because of them I was going to spend the break in a small room with padding, wearing a nice jacket with wrap around sleeves.  Wednesday I had a student crawl out the window and yesterday I almost had a fight in my classroom after school.

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Wed, 3rd period.  We're working on the graphing worksheet I gave them when some kids, who were sluffing, came by my room.  Patrick got up out of his seat and just headed out the door, I intercepted him and reminded him that if he left the room it would count as a sluff.  Then I go out into the hall to harass these kids for not being in class.  I shoo them off to class (yeah, like that's where they're going to go), head back into the classroom and immediately notice that Patrick is missing.  Assuming he's hiding under a desk or in some other crevice, I start looking around when someone tells me he jumped out the window.  Yeah, right. (I am on the first floor).  I look out the window and lo and behold, there are foot prints heading away from it.  So I walk out into the hall and there he is, strutting down the hall heading back to class.  In his seat I look at him and ask "You jumped out the window?"  No, of course he didn't.  Those are someone else's footprints.  I go over and grab a shoe off his foot, take it over to the window and say "Hmmm, same tread print, looks like the same size show.  It was you."

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The next day (Thu) right after 4th period, a kid that has hardly ever talked to me comes into my room and starts a conversation.  As we're talking I notice a whold group of kids coming in and surrounding a student of mine that has stayed after to finish her assignment.  I see her looking down at her paper, obviously trying to ignore the group, working on the assignment listening to her iPod.  Yeah, something's up.  I inform the group that they are cordially invited to get out of my room, close the door behind them and look at my student.  She's shaking, like someone trying to hold back intense fear and anger.  I'm not going into details, it's the basic teenage crap, except to say that another girl was trying to get her to throw the first punch, and I'm proud to say she didn't take the bait.  "I don't want to get expelled" was the first thing she said when she calmed down.  Contacted the counselor, contacted the Vice Principal, student's mom came in and gave her an extra day of vacation and the instigators got reamed by the VP this morning.  Seems he's had trouble with them before.  Hopefully it all blows over by the time we come back, or maybe the VP made it clear whose butt was going to be in a sling if it happened again.

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Oh, and a Subaru with new snow tires rocks!  It didn't even slip a bit coming up my driveway with 4+" of snow on the ground.

Now you know why I bought a Subaru...

The neighbors got tired of seeing me shovel my driveway....

If I were a paranoid-schizophrenic I'd think they were all after me....

At the risk of beating this issue to death, I had yet another incident while driving today. I'm trying to leave out the mundane, run of the mill stupid, arrogant maneuvers. But this one was a fresh new look on brain dead. Coming out of the Smith's on 9th & 9th, there is clearly an in and an out, and both of them are wide enough for 2 cars, one turning left, the other turning right. As I'm leaving, wanting to turn right, there are two cars as far left as possible, exactly where they should be to turn left. Virginia Subaru up front isn't signaling, the Camry (or whatever) behind is signaling right, but in Utah that doesn't mean anything, so I pull to the right of them positioning myself to turn right. I was driving the LTD Convertible, and didn't even have to hop the curb to get around them, that's how far to the left they were. Camry honks as I go by, like I was supposed to sit back there until I was 100% sure which of the conflicting cues was correct. I ignore it. Just as I'm about to pull out into traffic, dumbass Virginia Subaru blares his horn at me and cuts me off, taking a right turn from the left lane, right in front of me, all the while talking on his cell phone. So I honk back and, as I pass him as he pulls into a parking space, yell something about hanging up the phone and driving. He honks again and flips me the bird. I verbalize the finger back at him and head off home. 2 fer 1 deal on boneheads @ Smith's today.