Tag Archives: Driving

Sep6

Weight Loss and Heart Monitor and Spanish Meetup!!

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Weight Loss and Heart Monitor and Spanish Meetup!!

This morning I went in to Weight Watchers, down another 2.2 pounds. Total of 9.8, so I’ll have to wait until next week to make a big deal about losing 10 pounds at the meeting.

I went straight to the cardiologist for the sticking-on of my 24 hour Holter Monitor (I thought it was Halter, but I was wrong!) My clothing keeps sticking to the little electrodes, and two of them are right under the underwire of my bra. Ouchies. Well, it’s only until tomorrow morning. Now, the thing is, the cardiologist is sure I’m fine. The psychologist is sure that my heart palpitations are more mental than physical. The fact of the matter is, though, that they’re happening, and they’re keeping me awake when I’d really rather be asleep. So I wanted to give the monitor something to record (and I was tired anyway) so after I’d put away groceries and had lunch, I laid down for a nap. Well, in the two hours I was in bed, I woke up all startled with a racing, pounding heart three times. Take that, Holter Monitor! If nothing else, it’ll show a sudden speed up in my heart rate. Yeah, maybe nothing’s wrong, but at least it’ll show I’m not a hypochondriac or imagining things.

After I woke up, I continued my project, which I’d gotten bored with earlier, on looking up vocabulary in Spanish on cars and driving. I blogged before about my dream, in which I was teaching a Spanish class about the parts of a car, realized suddenly I didn’t know any of the words myself, then went into the oral proficiency exam and was asked to role-play a situation involving a car accident. Well, I probably should have worked on that right after, but I still work best under pressure, even decades after college. Heh. I found a really good site where a guy who works in the VW factory in Mexico described the entire design/assembly/quality control process from start to finish, and also found the driver’s manual in Spanish for the state of Arizona. I have three pages of really helpful words and phrases, and I’m taking copies with me to my first Spanish Language Meetup at the library tonight. Woohoo! I’m hoping that it’s going to be a fun evening!

Aug9

More New Jersey Driver Stuff.

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More New Jersey Driver Stuff.

When we were living up North, one of the things that drove us nuts was drivers jumping the light to turn left. This is patently dangerous, especially when done by older drivers in large cars who take the entire light change to cut you off. They jump the light. . .very. . .slow. . .ly. . .Still, as nerve-wracking as this was, at least you could anticipate the idjits. Here in South Jersey, we face a far more dangerous threat – the curve cutter. Below, I have a little tidbit from the NJ driver’s manual:

Ideally, this is the way it should be done. The guy in the blue car has nothing to fear. However, note the other, cruder arrow that I’ve drawn in for your edification. This is the Toms River Trajectory. The guy in the blue car is gonna get creamed if he approaches the intersection like a normal driver, because the Toms River guy in the red car isn’t going to waste his time driving all the way around that turn on the right hand side of the road. Oh, nosirreebob! Normally, NJ law also asks that you stop approximately three feet before the stop sign, so you can check for pedestrians (not that anyone anywhere does that, mind you), then you move foward into the intersection to look for oncoming traffic. Down here, better make that three car lengths, especially if the guy in the house to your right has mature landscaping. Up north, you see the guy. . .you see the wild look in his eyes dammiti’mnotwaitingforyoua**holei’mturningthesecondthelightchanges. . .you can anticipate it. In fact, it’s almost a time-honored tradition to yield the right of way rather than have to deal with the cops and the insurance. This curve cutting can’t be predicted, because you can’t see the guy who’s about to do it. I have no idea how many accidents are caused by this halfwit maneuver, but I’ll betcha it’s a lot.

Aug7

NJ Drivers. . .Driving Us Mad

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NJ Drivers. . .Driving Us Mad

So hubby got hit by a driver making a left without checking to see if there was anyone in his path.  The car will be in the shop for who knows how long, so I took him out to pick up a rental this morning.  Traffic on the Parkway was slow, but apparently some guy in a Cadillac didn’t know that, and plowed into the car in front of him, which hit the car in front of >him<, which hit hubby’s rental car.

Then drove away.

One of the other drivers thinks he got the guy’s plates, though.  Idiot.