Ironies

Hello, dear blog readers. For those of you who are wondering, the new job is going really well thus far. I think I'm really going to like it, especially after the newbie nerves wear off.

Also, a few people have been asking about the commute. In general, it's not a bad one as most commuters have their morning routine down to a science for the most part. Every now and then you get a semi truck in the wrong lane or someone doing 50 mph in the second-to-far-left lane, but that doesn't happen very often. Those morning commuters are pretty much all business.

Now, the afternoon/evening traffic is a different story. You'll see more of someone doing 50 mph in the wrong lane and someone else whizzing by the rest of us who are doing 70-75 mph like we're standing still. It'll never cease to amaze me when I see guys throwing their cars and weaving in and out of traffic as if their vehicles are toys, but as long as they don't hit me or cause an accident, I guess I can't complain too much.

So anyway, there was a situation last week that I thought was blog-worthy. I got out of class around 4:00 in the afternoon and was sitting in afternoon traffic. The frontage road near the hospital gets pretty backed up with people waiting to get onto the expressway. Behind me, there was a woman in a new BMW SUV. Since traffic was going slowly, I got to watching her in my rear view. She had her I-phone out and was steering with her elbows. It was like roadkill; it was making me nervous to watch but I couldn't help it because I was afraid she would rear-end me. After about 10 minutes of this, we were getting close to the intersection. I saw her put the phone away, and I was fairly relieved. But then, 30 seconds later, I saw her digging in her bag on the passenger seat. Her car was in motion, but she wasn't even glancing at the road. Yipes! I thought she was going for the phone again, but no! She had pulled out a makeup bag and was applying her "freshening up" goodies of lipstick and mascara...While driving! By this point, we were at the junction of the entrance to the expressway. I thought surely by this time she would pay attention as traffic would have to accelerate to at least 60 mph. To my relief, she didn't even see that the light had changed. I moved on, and another car got sick of her sitting in the intersection, so he went around her. After she realized that she missed the proverbial boat, she got in line behind me again to get onto the 163 North. Surely, I thought, now she would be done goofing around, but alas. Another glance in my rear view displayed her filing her nails. And again, as the light changed and I progressed onto 163, she hadn't noticed that the light had changed. As a horn from behind her sounded, she sped up. I chose to let her pass me as her antics made me think that her behavior might cause some sort of damage to my vehicle.

As she passed, I noticed about five "Baby on Board" signs in the windows. I thought this was exteremly ironic since those signs are more or less designed to make people drive a little more carefully, and here the worst driver on the road was her. Oh well. Welcome to California driving!