Friday got here. It took its sweet time to get here, for sure… but it’s here.
Roads are easy… it’s a little wet, and there WAS a little fog, but because fog is such a fickle thing, it’s likely that by the time you read this, after 7:00 AM, the fog will have evaporated, leaving little more than sunshine and unicorns, except for the unicorns. Those things are rare. Anyhow, even IF there is still a little fog hanging around, it’s not heavy, being light to moderate, and only patchy.
Now, temps are in the freezingish range… but, at least in the Crestline area, the rain seems to be keeping the ice at bay. I tried like hell to find something slippery in order to have just a little fun, but failed. I couldn’t find slickery anywhere. Higher elevations might have some thin ice… but I sure couldn’t find any down here.
I’m told that the Arctic Circle is closed right now (this is the section of Highway 18 that sorta goes from near Snow Valley ski resort to the Big Bear dam… it”s not a circle, and it’s not Arctic, but whatever).
Also note that Lake Drive is even closeder than it was yesterday… that sinkhole in front of Dave Viking Auto (across the street from Arrowhead Credit Union/the old theater/the Crestline Cafe… mmmm, delicious…) has been coned-off with so many cones and pylons, and sawhorses and tape that even if you drove at it full speed in a Peterbilt at gross weight, you’d get tangled in the warning stuff before you ever reached the sinkhole. The Pentagon should take lessons from our local road crews, in order to learn how to prevent the possibility of suicide bombers reaching certain restricted areas with their vehicles. Anyhow, the detour for traffic in that direction is still in place, but only adds a few seconds to your drive… while the other-direction traffic lane is still open. Open, as in, you can drive there, not open as in, open pit mine or anything.
My commute today was a little later than usual… and I got to witness a surreal scene. The cloud cover down here, for a short while, was such that the western sky was brightly lit, and appeared like a sunset… while the eastern sky was dark, and covered over with clouds. Note that this is the REVERSE of how a morning would be excepted to look. It was really quite intriguing, even if I got off the freeway three different times to make U-turns, thinking it was time to go home. That’s why I was so late today. Hopefully, when my autonomous car gets here. It’ll be immune to such meteorological trickery.
So, news yesterday included a story about a customer in Philadelphia at a Taco Bell. He was annoyed that his order for a couple of tacos was 45 minutes in the making… other customers in the store at the time were complaining of wait times in excess of an hour. Well, this guy expressed his displeasure at this obscene, so-not-worth-it wait time. He simply verbalized his displeasure at this loss of lifetime, spent standing in a room with dozens of OTHER annoyed customers, as all whiled away the time waiting for freakin’ “tacos” that are barely worth the $0.69 pre-paid, and certainly not when they require the investment of a significant portion of one’s day.
As he exited the store, a few employees followed him outside, where they beat the crap out of him… and they did the same to the guy’s girlfriend, who had not even entered the building!
Apparently, though, it was all worthwhile, because the location’s manager gave the victim a $20 gift card. So, geez… big payday.
Okay, so here’s ANOTHER Taco Bell story… a little more personal to me, with perhaps even a new perspective for me.
A few years ago, I was the manager of a fleet of truck drivers. One day, the police called me, and asked me to instruct one of my drivers, who we will simply call, “Paul,” because his name was, “Paul,” to go to a specific place, at a specific time. My driver was to be told that this was routine, work-related dispatch… but, instead, it was a police ploy to catch a perp. “Act normal,” the police told me… ironically, that’s usually what’s going through MY mind whenever there’s a cop behind me on the road. Whatever… they wanted to be able to have a platoon of cops ready at some place where they knew that my driver would be at the same time. So, I set it up. And I acted normal.
My driver arrived as scheduled, and was promptly cuffed and stuffed. In fact, I never saw the guy again, because apparently, if you get mad in the Taco Bell drive-thru, and you shoot the drive-thru attendant multiple times, this is not considered legal recourse for slow service. I was told that the Taco Bell guy survived, but still, no matter how imbecilic the Taco Bell drive-thru guy might have been, he still had a legal right to not have new holes put into him.
It was weird to me, too, as Paul was really, truly, a very mild-mannered, nice guy. One of the last people on Earth I would have guessed as likely to do such a thing. Heck, I would have put MYSELF higher on the list for “Likely to lose all composure and end up in prison because the Taco Bell drive-thru guy is an abysmal idiot” than Paul. But, I guess Paul had just snapped. In fact, since my list has me higher than Paul for this crime, it’s probably a good idea for me to avoid the drive-thru completely.
Anyhow, with those two stories, one might surmise that Taco Bell employees and Taco Bell customers have a volatile relationship. Yikes. Before, all I ever REALLY worried about was somebody spitting in my food if I returned an item because they forgot the cheese in my chalupa or the tortilla on my burrito. Tip for the day… tip for LIFE, something that mothers and fathers should teach their children: never, ever ever, EVER send food back to the fast-food kitchen to be redone… unless you like other peoples’ saliva. That’s just a thing you must know.
Enjoy the weekend… it’s just a few hours away now. To quote Rob Schnieder: You can do it!