Long Day

What a night. I had a lovely 3 hour drive, two of which were in on and off style white-out conditions. I nearly died twice as a result of a car that's too light catching 9 foot snow drifts half way into the shitty country roads on the way home from work. If I were the type of driver who thinks "oh shit" instead of "relax, how can I minimize the disaster" I would have ended up wrong-side-up in a ditch. Fucking heroing.

As soon as I get where I'm going I call my girlfriend who's just leaving work. She is walking toward and eventually talks to a police officer standing in the street with a rifle. Apparently she can't get to her car in the parking garage because there is some whack-job wielding a gun in a standoff with police. That makes me feel better, it's good to know those people are there. I'm just thankful she didn't get out of work a bit sooner. That's scary fucking shit when you think about it. I'm just thankful the cops beat her there. The thing I don't understand is that if the guy has no hostages, why have a standoff. A sniper's bullet would cost taxpayers a dollar or two. Putting this asshole in prison will cost $40,000 a year or so. That's what we employ swat snipers for. Lets create one more job cleaning up the guy's tiny little brain and call it a day. He'll just get out in a minor amount of time and be doing the same goddamn thing! Kill the crazy fuck and call it a day.

So now I'm sitting in a comfort inn somewhere in Pennsylvania. The room is actually really nice. The place appears to be clean, the bathroom is nice. I was happy... until I had a shower. It turns out that the dial for the water goes 360 degrees. It also just happens that only 3 of those degrees, not even the three one would suspect, result in a reasonable water temperature. I come to find out, after about 12 minutes, that it's somewhere between 23 and 26 degrees or so on that dial that I can actually stand under the water. I went from showering with Siberian ice water pouring on my hypothermic brain, to standing under the falling flow of something that victims of Pompeii would recognize, and back again several hundred times. Even once I got the right temperature, it continued to rise and rise until it burned and I changed it again. I still don't understand the water, and the burns will heal, but at least I know I'll need an extra hour to adjust the shower in the morning.

I just can't wait to get the day over tomorrow and get to Virginia to see my girlfriend. That seems to be the only time my blood pressure drops to human levels and my heart rate doesn't resemble that of a hummingbird (at least, not for bad reasons). I don't know what I would do without you luv.