J.P.

It’s easy to tell that winter is just around the corner here in Upstate N.Y. Everyone’s driving skills have gone from “asshat” to “unbelievable asshat”. Now mind you, it’s not snowing or hailing or anything like that today. It’s raining. While not a torrential downpour, the rain is steady and does warrant some extra caution on the road.

That does not mean slowing down to 35 MPH in the middle of the freeway.

I find it remarkable that some people drive around in a light drizzle with their windshield wipers set to “hysterical”. There’s maybe 50 rain drops on their windshield and their wipers are whipping back and forth as if they’re trying to flag down a funnel cloud or something. It’s crazy. I have noticed that the bigger the vehicle, the more apt the wipers are to be hysterical, so maybe there’s a correlation between small genitalia and fast windshield wipers. After all, the bigger the car, the smaller the dick.

I am not a perfect driver by any stretch of the imagination. However, I am a confident driver. I know what I am capable of and I know what my car is capable of. Regardless of the vehicle I am driving, I consider it an extension of my own body and awareness. It’s not a difficult thing to do; just feel the road and be aware of your surroundings and you’ll be good to go.

And while I’m on a rant, I think the “lights on when windshield wipers are on” law is stupid. The government has no business trying to legislate common sense. However, turning your lights on when your windshield wipers are on is good sense, since its usually darker when its raining outside. If you have to squint to see your speedometer, it’s too dark to be running around with your lights off. If people would think for themselves, the government wouldn’t have to do it for them.

So drive carefully today, regardless of the weather. And more importantly, be confident and drive sensibly.

Thank goodness it’s the weekend. I’ve been in the mood for it since Monday and now it’s finally here. Earl and I are headed to Buffalo in the morning for the monthly bear night. We’re looking forward to meeting up with our friends Tim and Steve. I think there’s a diner stop in Rochester on the way out there too.

I just received my copy of Motion 2 so that I can get snazzy with my little video projects. I’m really enjoying this creative outlet. I hope I don’t wear out my PowerBook G4. That would mean I need to buy another computer! The horrors!

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Here’s a hottie for your weekend enjoyment. It’s comedian Zach Galifianakis. I haven’t heard his standup, I’ve been too busy finding his pictures on the internet. He’s not on the team but not bad to look at nonetheless.

I spent most of the night last night doing my on-call duties. I tried to take several catnaps in between the phone calls to, well, a really big, disorganized telephone company that rhymes with Horizon. But several catnaps joined together do not equal one good night of sleep. Thank goodness tonight is the last night of on-call for the next week and a half!

Quick bursts of sleep in the middle of the night are quite fascinating. With each successive catnap, I find that my dreams get more and more vivid. Then they just start getting weird. The final dream last night involved my calling Earl out onto the back deck to watch the new space shuttle land (three times as big as the old one with big bay windows on the side) at the local Air Force Base. We watched it fly over the house. We waved at the astronauts. The dream was in vivid technicolor. I was amused when I awoke. I don’t know where the heck that dream came from but it was the second space shuttle related dream I’ve had this week, the first being that Earl and I went to watch a space shuttle launch in Florida that was subsequently aborted during lift-off. To abort, the astronauts threw it in reverse and landed back on the launch pad. There were even backup lights on the back of the space shuttle. I have no idea what this all means.

Perhaps I’m reading too many sci-fi stories again.