Bleh weekend

[sugarplumkitty]

I'm fighting something off. Toward the end of the week I felt awful, nothing specific other than aches and pains with extreme tiredness so I pushed myself to go to work. Saturday Eric wanted to go buy a garbage disposal so he could install it. Well, we've been without one for a year now and things have gotten pretty nasty in the old broken one so I wasn't about to say I wouldn't go. Maybe I should have. On the way back an idiot in an enormous white pickup cut us off on the expressway after tailgating the two people in the middle lane. We were in the slow lane doing speed limit. This moron cut over without enough room so I had to jam on the brakes to keep him from taking off our front fender then he had the nerve to flip us off.

Now, when I'm feeling decent healthwise, I can usually shrug that off. But this time it just pissed me off. I followed him to find out what the urgency was. Even as I did it, I kept trying to talk myself down by saying "It's his karma," but it didn't work. He kept tailgating and weaving in and out of traffic like a moron for the city block to our neighborhood, then he turned onto the street we use to get home. If he hadn't, I might not have followed him. Since he did, I kept driving speed limit and wasn't it funny how he suddenly stopped speeding? He went down to the last turn off the access street and all the way down to the back corner of our neighborhood. I was glad he was a good three blocks from our house. He backed into his driveway. There was no license plate on the front of his truck. Wonder if he does that for this reason? When he got out I was shocked to see a middle aged man. Somehow I expected a 20 year old in Daddy's truck.

The rush? A car was parked in the small area between his driveway and his neighbor's. A younger man and a little girl got out to go into the house with him. I tried to get out of my car to ask him if it was worth the 15 seconds he gained and why he cut us off and flipped us off while we were going SPEED LIMIT IN THE SLOW LANE but my key jammed in the ignition and the car was making annoying ding sounds when I opened the door. My plan was to stand at my car and yell my questions at him, holding back on obscenities because there was a little child present. Before I got a chance to get out and ask him WTF? He got to his door and yelled he was calling the cops and we'd better get off his property.

Eric yelled for him to go ahead. We were parked on a public street. He has no say in who parks in the street in front of his house. I yelled, "YOU SHOULDN'T NEARLY TAKE PEOPLE'S FENDERS OFF THEN FLIP THEM OFF!" Then Eric yelled, "LEARN TO DRIVE!"

He slammed his door and we left. I had trouble sleeping that night. The scenario kept running through my head over and over. What was I thinking?? What if he had come at us? What if he had a gun? Should I have shouted at the father of the little girl not to let her ride with the old man because it would have been child endangerment? Nah, he probably doesn't drive that way with someone in the truck with him. Should we have written his address down and called the police to at least warn him to get some mental help?

Heh, maybe I'd be counseled to get mental help for following him in a rage. Eric thinks it was just me feeling awful that caused my reaction. I really shouldn't drive when I'm feeling as crabby as I was all weekend.

In happier news, we now have a functioning garbage disposal! YAY!

Also, after sleeping 12 hours both Friday and Saturday nights and doing nothing at all on Sunday, I'm feeling much better. I didn't even stay up to watch Mad TV or Saturday Night Live when I usually stay up to watch Showtime at the Apollo then record the classic SNL that comes after. None of that got done and it's OK. Because I'm feeling much better.

I really should have used Eric's camera to get a good picture of my short ethernet cable for my poster, but I guess I can do that tonight. All interns have to produce a poster of what we do. The poster session is Thursday from 2pm to 4pm. Karen and Woody are coming to have lunch with me and attend the poster session. I don't know yet if my mom is up to it. If she is, I'm going to ask Karen to bring her. I can't wait to see what all my fellow interns are doing! There are so many scientific jobs that fascinate me and I know a bunch of them are involved in those. I wonder what the accounting and purchasing people are doing for their posters? That would be difficult to make interesting.

Comments

[kitfoxx.livejournal.com]

I hate to say this, but I'm pretty sure that following the guy (regardless of your reasons or his stupidity) is illegal. So even if you'd called the cops, or he'd called the cops because you were "on his property" (even though you weren't) you might have gotten in trouble.

[sugarplumkitty.livejournal.com]

I know. It was a stupid thing to do. Most of the "following him" was our route home. If we'd called out "Citizen's arrest" and called the cops to the scene, it might have been different. We didn't break any laws with speed, lane changes or turns the way he did.

The "citizen's arrest" idea was one that flew through my mind as I lay there not sleeping.

[san-simeon-girl.livejournal.com]

Wow--for a girl, you got balls :) Heheh... I wouldn't have had the nerve to do that. I'm glad you didn't get hurt. Who knows, he COULD have had a gun. In our state (MN), people can get conceal/carry permits. I don't know about yours.

[sugarplumkitty.livejournal.com]

I think it was more stupidity than balls. People who drive like that live like that. They're dangerous. Concealed gun permits do exist here. I'm not sure if construction workers usually carry them. His truck was a construction worker type truck.

[fleur.livejournal.com]

Good point .. someone who is aggressive like that in the car is probably aggressive out of the car, too, whether it's the way they are all the time or if they're just having a bad day that particular day or whatever.

[sugarplumkitty.livejournal.com]

Lesson I learned: No matter how much someone pisses me off on the road, I WILL disengage my anger from it.

[gladtobehere.livejournal.com]

O

[sugarplumkitty.livejournal.com]

It's not my style to do that. It has to be due to the virus lowering my emotional threshold.

[gladtobehere.livejournal.com]

i SO know that.... i understand completely Linda...

(((((((((LINDA)))))))))))

this too shall pass

[sugarplumkitty.livejournal.com]

aww, thanks!

[dolphingirl.livejournal.com]

Wow...I never pictured you as one for road rage! Anger gets the better of all of us sometimes, even infinitely patient people like yourself :) I'm glad you're ok, though!

[sugarplumkitty.livejournal.com]

It has to be because I was feeling ill. I've got no other explanation.

[yeoww.livejournal.com]

I do understand.

[angelsmum.livejournal.com]

I leant my lesson with road rage too. Some dick pulled out in front of me and I would have hit him if I hadn't braked, so I gave him the bird, and he followed me to the carpark and ranted and raved at me. I wasn't scared of him ,and he was completely in the wrong (he insisted I was going too fast but I know for a fact I was nowhere near the speedlimit even). But it made me think what freaks are out there and that as a woman usually driving alone I should perhaps reign in my temper a little. After all look what happened to Pegi's daughter. =S
Theo ther day though someone tooted at me and it was totally unjustified (I pulled out of an intersection and they hadn't been visible even though I had fully stopped, and looked...they were also goinga bit too fast for the area we were in) so I stopped in the middle of the road lol, they pulled up and we had actually a short civil conversation about it! hehe.

[sugarplumkitty.livejournal.com]

lol