Sephy’s Platzish

It’s not surprising that there is the occasional deer around in the area - in fact, I’ve posted pictures of them before. However, one of the biggest dangers out there on our roads is the high number of deer that go running around at will - and they have the right to, since they were here before we were, and to be honest, we’re encroaching quite heavily on their habitat. However, the strange thing is that since I drive every night in the dark, I’ve seen deer at least 4 times now - and they’ve always been in the same spot - which is good and bad for a couple of reasons.

It’s good because I then expect to see them there, however, it is bad because I’ve gotten kinda paranoid about it, so I go really slow through there now, which could mess things up for other traffic. That is, if there was other traffic on this road - I think I’ve only encountered one or two cars the whole time I’ve driven on that road (it’s not the most frequently travelled road, since it’s a mile to the east of a main road, and cut off at the freeway).

I know folks in Australia have to constantly be on the lookout for the different animals that are out there, and I gotta say that even though I know the damage deer can do to a car (thanks to having heard tons and tons of car v deer accidents on the radio), the though of hitting a kangaroo is one of those things that I would not want to experience when I go over there.

One last little riddle for y’all, which I don’t expect an answer for. I’ve been listening to radio broadcasts from World War II, and as a lot of you may know, the whole nation observed Daylight Saving Time year-round during the war. However, instead of referring to it as "Eastern Daylight Time", it was referred to as "Eastern War Time". What I’m curious about is why they chose to call it war time and not daylight time…

I had my first real near miss today while out driving. And it was quite scary, even if I wouldn’t have been at fault.

It all started with a trip to get gas from a station where we had a 4¢/gal coupon, and to go deposit my check - however, that part of the trip was called off when the mail came and no check came as a surprise.

Anyway, we go to the gas station, park next to the pump, and the first strange thing happens - a guy pulls up with his Jeep and trailer and goes very gingerly past the car in order to get to the next pump ahead. The only thing I noticed about the vehicle was that it was red and it had a dent in the rear panel.

I go around and do the usual stuff that you do while the car’s filling with gas - you know, cleaning the windows, cleaning the dirt off of the car, etc., using the wiper/squeegee that they have for you to use. The car fills up (we had an excellent run for this fillup - 22 miles per gallon {I didn’t note the L/100km, sorry y’all!) according to the trip computer), and then we go to pay for the gas, and I get back in the car.

Uh, yeah, that wasn’t supposed to happen - if you’re reading this after 11.19PM CDT Saturday, it makes no sense, but apparently Ctrl+Shift+S is a shortcut in w.bloggar to publish the post!

Now, back to the story, which so far is quite normal and, honestly, quite boring.

Because of the guy with the trailer, I had to back out from the pump, and instead of choosing to go up the 2-lane backroads, I decided that we’d go towards the freeway (mostly because it’s faster and more efficient if you ask me), which means that I left the store’s lot (the station I went to is one that is in the outlot of the store it’s attached to, the 4¢ coupons come with any purchase - so far, no minimums that I know of) through the exit with a stoplight.

As we’re sitting at the stoplight, I start to wonder if it will ever change, as I was first in line to go and make the left turn to head towards the freeway. Finally, it changed, and we got the green light. The last time I checked the rules of the road, when one road at a stoplight has the green light, the cross road has the red light.

Apparently, I was wrong.

As I was starting out of the lot, all of a sudden a van comes flying up on the left side of me, horn blaring, so my instinctual reaction was to slam the brakes, then hit the horn back at this complete nutter who ran the red light. Oh, but there was one more small element to the story.

I flipped the person off. Not a terribly shocking occurrance on the roads, but from me, a bit rare. I wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t for one thing that they did.

Yeah, this woman who (need I remind anyone) ran the red light flipped me off!

After that little incident, I moved off and was quite shaky - my heart was beating something fierce - and I was a bit of a basketcase. I also said something along the lines of f–king morons a couple of times (and, yes, I did use the F word in front of my mother - it didn’t bother me, mostly because she would have been doing the same thing!). My only thought was to get somewhere and get out of the car for a little while. So, where do you go in a case like that?

There really is only one place for someone like me - Best Buy. Thankfully, they’re only a little way down the road. We spent a bit of time faffing around in the store, and yes, we made purchases - nothing exciting; 2 iPod covers and a screen protector, a bottle of water for me, a bottle of Coke for my Mom and she also got a couple of mini note sets that they have at the checkout lane. The total cost - $25 $15 $10 $6.78 - the iPod covers were the most expensive item at $1.99 for the whole kit. Who says I can’t find a bargain?

We also did a bit of looking at TVs, I played around with the tuners, switching them to the race broadcast that was on over-the-air today (btw, Channel 12 - why in the name of all that is good in this world do you have to have your bloody logo on the HD feed? Like the SD feed, we know that if we’re watching ABC, we’re watching channel 12!)

We also looked at phones, as I’ve had my phone for well over 3 years now, and it’s getting time to upgrade phones. I haven’t decided which one I want, but I definitely want to stay with my current provider, as they’re the only one I know of that lets you have mobile phone service for $5.28 per month.

BTW, the advice given to me after the incident happened was that it would only be the first in a line of near misses…

Let’s take a walk, shall we?

Sunday, 30th December

No photo, as almost all of my walking was done in the annals of Orchard Field, Chicago. As it turned out, I had plenty of time to wander around the airport, as we were sitting there for almost 90 minutes waiting for the flight to come in. I went up to the check-in hall, and it was practically dead; the only folks there being some folks waiting for an Iberian flight to Spain, or wherever they were flying to punctually. For an airport that is the world’s second-busiest based on number of passengers served, you’d think they’d have more than a Starbucks and a (according to someone I chatted with who’d experienced this before) poor hot-dog joint in the public areas (i.e. before the security screening). Heck, even in Milwaukee, you have a wide variety of places to have food, pick up the newspaper, and even get some old books in the pre-security area. Ah well, that’s enough for the ranting.

Total distance - 6443 steps, 5.15km

Monday, 31st December

One of the horses in the paddock gets some protection from the harsh cold that was due to set in over the next day and a half. Needless to say, the temperatures were very bad (as in near or below zero degrees Fahrenheit; -13 and lower Celsius).

Total distance - 2451 steps, 1.96km

Tuesday, 1st January

I didn’t get too far in the walk - all the way to the end of the driveway before the harsh winds got to me. Spring and summer can’t come soon enough for me; something I never thought I’d say!

Total distance - 709 steps, 0.56km

Wednesday, 2nd January

A look over the snow-covered field towards the sun in the southwest. I love the contrast between the shadows and the snow that creates them. It’s one of the beautiful things of winter, and despite my dislike of the extreme cold, one reason why it’s really cool to have 4 seasons around here.

The walking distance includes some steps that I took at a store while purchasing some salt for our water softener, just so you know

Total distance - 3255 steps, 2.60km

Thursday, 3rd January

I don’t think I’ve shown many train photos for these walks, but I have to say that this is one of my favorite ones that I’ve taken. Now, photo purists will say that the fact that the cars beyond the locomotives are out of focus, but I say pfft! I like the photo and that’s all that matters

Total distance - 2145 steps, 1.71km

Friday, 4th January

This is kind of an odd shot, but this is what happens when you have snow that drifts over your driveway - you drive the car through the drift, spin the tyres, back up, and go through it with more momentum. As you might be able to see, the rightmost track is straight, and I am proud to say that this was my handiwork.

Total distance - 2218 steps, 1.77km

Saturday, 5th January

Yeah, I’m not feeling this whole feeling blah thing. I was so tired all day that my walk consisted of a short saunter to the mailbox and back to pick up the mail and papers that had collected in the 24 hours since my last trip there (it’s not a lot, but it does add up, and we do recycle). No picture, but I can describe the look of the day - it was gray, but the snow was going away slowly as it was above freezing. The fog wouldn’t set in until later (which at its worst on Sunday, was so bad that you couldn’t see more than about 20m in front of you and there were people driving with no lights on!)

Total distance - 492 steps, 0.39km

In other news, I went back to my therapist on Wednesday and we had a good session, talking about ways to get my motivation sparked; it’s something that we will be focusing on I think over the next couple of weeks or so, and we’re scheduled out to the middle of February. The trip down to the airport on Sunday wasn’t as eventful as the trip down the first time (since we had change for the tolls, thankyouverymuch), though the last leg to home was a little bit hairy with the snow starting to fall gently, but it was not that much of a big deal for me to contend with.

This week, I’m looking to debut my first redesign of a blog template - it’s about 99% complete; the only thing left to do on it is make one more adjustment to the header size (making it take up much less space than it does currently; I’ve previewed it and it looks sharp). The other thing I need to do is figure out how to make a testing platform that is similar to the one that is used on the WordPress themes site - I don’t think it’s going to be that hard to do, but we’ll see.

I don’t know how many of you took a second to take a look at the picture I posted a link to yesterday, so here it is, full size

As simple as this photo seems, there is actually a story behind it. For the first time ever, I was able to take advantage of having a license and access to a car in order to do something for my own pleasure (I’ve gone out to drive a couple of times on my own before - the first was just an acclimation drive, and then on Wednesday, I had to go to an appointment during the day).

I can still remember one Sunday morning when I saw a train heading north and thinking “If I had a license I’d go and follow that train”. So, when I saw this steam engine heading down the tracks yesterday, my thought wasn’t “darn, I hope I’ll catch it later”, it was “OK! Boots on and off I go to catch this train!” I was so much of a hurry that I didn’t bother putting socks on and put the boots on my bare feet.

So, anyway, I get into the car, start it up, and head out of the driveway, dodging the trashcan which was almost in the middle of the driveway (I’d later find out that this was the week when our “G-Man” left his Christmas card, labelled “Happy Holiday’s”, but the card did say Merry Christmas), and down to the first photo spot, kind of keeping an eye on the smokestack from the train as I was going along.

I then got to the spot, and pulled completely off of the road (though not too far), and got out. I waited about a minute or two and then the train started to come around the corner, which was my prompt to start photographing. Here are a couple of shots that I took as it was approaching the crossing -

After that, it was on to the next location (where the photo at the top was taken) - at first I was going to stop by that crossing that you can see in the photo, but then I decided to go around to the next crossing. While on the way over there (which isn’t that long of a drive), a guy driving a green car with dealer plates came hurtling through a corner and we almost collided. However, I slammed on the brakes and he did as well, and all was well (even though my heart rate was slightly elevated).

I then pulled up behind an SUV with Illinois plates on it, and behind me a smaller SUV pulled up with Iowa plates on it - can you tell that word about these trips gets out nowadays?

But I digress; within a couple of minutes, the train came into sight and the folks who were there along with me started shooting, and about a minute later, it was all over, and it was time to move on for me.

I had a choice to make - either go to one more crossing to take a few more pictures, or just to head home with the photos I had already. I decided to go ahead and head to one last crossing. By far, this was the least populated crossing I stopped at - only the fella from Iowa was there, stopped on the other side of the tracks than I was. I grabbed a few more photos (one of which I put as my wallpaper straight after I got home, I liked it that much), including this one - the train steaming away onto its final destination.

Hmm…now if it was summer I think I could see myself heading out to some new photo locations other than my usual ones I’ve had for just about ever.

At the end of my post about passing my driving test, I mentioned the possibility of some news about a car. Then, in the comments I made mention of it possibly including heated leather.

We didn’t have an appointment at the dealership we wound up at, but  we were given a contact to speak about concerning a car. Of course, I had checked into this particular dealership before we went down there, and found out that they specialize in selling what are very high end cars - such as Jaguars. In fact, as you walked into the building, you could tell that they were a site of elegance.

After rounding one corner, there was a flatscreen TV playing ESPN in HD, and then a further walk towards the customer lounge revealed the kids’ area where they had another widescreen TV playing SpongeBob on Nickelodeon (though I will note that they had it in the wrong aspect ratio, but it did seem right…).

Anyway, just as a guide to  the quality of cars they had in their showroom, here are a couple of photos I snapped while waiting for the person we were meeting.

To be honest, I’m not totally sure of what the exact model this is, but it is definitely a car you’d want in your driveway. At least when it’s warm

I also grabbed a picture of the interior of one of the cars in the showroom. As you can see, there was nothing lost in the details here - even the included GPS was there.

It wasn’t long after we started to ogle these cars that our contact came back with the information we were after.

Really, it was probably the shortest visit to a car dealership that actually involved a vehicle (I’ve been to dealerships for maybe three minutes in the course of picking up some stuff from a radio promotion before). Within about 15 minutes we were in and out of the dealership, and something very cool had happened.

No, we didn’t walk away with one of the Jaguars on the showroom floor, but we did drive home with a really nice car.

And it didn’t cost us a single penny - it was paid for in full, all that was required was signing the papers and then driving away. Literally, sign and drive (though as Volkswagen are promoting, it was really sign then drive ).

Now, for some obvious reasons (such as maintaining my anonymity - something that you are probably aware that I hold close to myself), I’m not going to tell you the precise make and model, or the dealership we got it from.

All I will say is this - I have more options for my freedom than I had just three days ago. I have the option to drive one of two cars that are sitting in the driveway right now. In fact, if I was so inclined, I could unlock the doors on the “new” car right now; I have my own remote keyless entry keyfob.

There’s a really cool feature to this car where if I press my unlock key, it will do some really cool things to the configuration of the car saving me a ton of time. All I have to do is get in, start the engine, turn on the heated seats, let the car warm up and drive off.

Now, how’s that for a reward for getting my license (and a lot of the other things I’ve been doing)?