Traffic SNAFU

Thought for the day: Some rights are worth dying for, but the right of way isn't one of them.

Unfortunately, road rage is a real thing, and some people aren't satisfied with merely offering a rather familiar and not-so-friendly hand gesture... which I prefer to interpret as You're number one. It takes a lot to get me riled, but I must admit, the lack of courtesy on our roads does kinda get my goat. Not that I resort to using the aforementioned gesture, but I do occasionally mutter some rather unladylike words. Under my breath, of course. (After all, the guy who forces me to hit the brakes because he just cut in front of me... even though there are abso-freaking-lutely no cars whatsoever BEHIND me... might not take too kindly to hearing some old lady's opinion about his driving skills or the legitimacy of his birth.)

I'm gonna ask you guys for your opinions about a particular driving situation, but before we get to that, let's just have a little fun with some road signs, shall we?

Now, I can't say that I've ever seen this sign myself, but if I did, you can be sure I'd have to stop the car and take a picture of it. It reminds me of a joke... Did you hear about the woman who tried to pull a Lorena Bobbitt on her philandering husband? In a blind rage, she ended up stabbing him multiple times in the leg. She was charged with a... ready for it?... a mis-da-weiner. 

I wonder if this sign is posted in a school district...?

I'd actually loooooooove to see signs like the one on the right. The one on the left? To tell the truth, around these parts, that isn't much of an exaggeration.

Now here's a sign some of those angry bird-flipping drivers might understand. It speaks their language.

HUH! Well, that's downright discriminatory! We old broads and geezers have just as much right to be on that road as the younguns.

You've all seen those signs warning drivers about various animal crossings. I say BRAVO to all of those smart animals who know where it's safe for them to cross.

(If the crossing's location is inconvenient for drivers, then the DOT could do what the dumb blonde suggested in a joke: For goodness sake, just move the sign!)

Now, I dunno what the heck this sign is trying to tell us. Has there been a spate of alien abductions in the area? (HMMMPH! I'd say that's a bunch of bull!)

A hand-made PSA posted by a concerned citizen.

This sign just makes me smile.

Okay, so it's time for me to STOP and get off of Procrastination Parkway and get to the gist of this post... getting your opinions about a particular traffic situation.

We've all seen those dreaded signs warning us of construction ahead. Grrrrreat, huh? Usually means delays, snarled traffic, and frayed nerves, not to mention an annoying kick in the seat to one's average rate of speed. (Particularly annoying on a long trip.)

But HERE'S the kind of sign I want to discuss with you. With the amount of roadwork and utility work going on around here, we see similar signs on every road from interstates to small roads within subdivisions. Often, they come with more specific information. Like, RIGHT LANE CLOSES IN ONE HALF MILE, usually followed by multiple distance count-down signs before the lane finally comes to an end.

Now here's the question: When you see a sign telling you that the lane you are in is going to close, when do you move over into the other lane? Smarticus and I have always moved over as soon as possible, and he certainly doesn't take too kindly to the folks who wait until the VERY LAST MOMENT to try to cut over in front of him. (i.e. We did the right thing, and they're inconsiderate a**holes.)

Kinda like the sentiments expressed on this sarcastic gem.

Or this one.


The thing is, I've seen some angry drivers at that actual point of lane-ending. Lots of honking horns and not-so-friendly hand signals.







Reminds me of a weird news story I wrote about in one of my posts in February of 2012:

***  An impatient Porsche driver in San Francisco wasn't happy about being stuck in traffic, so he set out to do something about it. You've seen this sort of driver before; we all have. They're usually behind the wheel of a high-dollar car, and I suppose they figure they're above the mundane laws of the road governing the rest of us peons. Anyway, they generally have no problem making their own lanes. Like the privileged characters they are, they'll whip down the shoulder or emergency lane to get past the traffic jam, and then count on the kindness of strangers to let them back on the road. That's exactly what the Porsche driver tried to do, only the empty lane he claimed was empty for a very good reason. A nice, wet, freshly-poured concrete reason. The guy went from being merely stuck in traffic to really stuck. Workers had to dig the car out, and though the incident may have ruined that Porsche dude's day, I have a feeling the other snickering drivers and pointing passersby considered it a delightful case of poetic justice.

I think the same kind of resentment over entitled drivers may be what's behind the less-than-friendly behavior when a lane closes. Ergo, we move over as soon as possible.

                                                                And that's certainly

                                  to respond to the situation. But as it turns out,  it may be the

According to Marilyn vos Savant, the super duper high IQ gal who writes a column for the Sunday newspaper, the right way to handle those approaching lane closures is to utilize both lanes for as long as possible. She says it's more efficient that way, and keeps traffic moving. Then at the closure point, cars are to take turns: proceed first from one lane, and then the other. I checked it out, and the DOT agrees with her. They even have a name for it; they call it the zipper method. After I read her article, I thought it did, indeed, make sense to do it that way, but Smarticus still says he's gonna move over well before the lane closes. A couple of other friends agreed with him, and they say that in a Utopian world, it'd be a great way to handle the situation, but it ain't a Utopian world, and people are gonna act like jerks at the convergence point. It might be a logical approach... but it isn't practical.
             
                                                         What do YOU think?

                                             I think... I'm gonna have a cuppa tea.

                            Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

The Power of Three

Thought for the day: To thrive in life, you need three bones: a wishbone, a backbone, and a funny bone. [Reba McEntire]

[courtesy of unsplash]

Have you ever given any thought to the alleged power of the number three? Fans of the TV show Charmed know that the three witch sisters' powers were greatly magnified when they worked as a unit, but in general, threesomes kinda permeate our lives, if you think about it.

Maybe the original notion about the strength of the number three stems from the trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but I don't know that for a fact. We had the three wise men, of course. And how about that much-beloved prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr that says: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. 

In the writing world, it's pretty much accepted that things that come in threes are somehow funnier or more effective and satisfying than other groupings. For example, there's the three little pigs, the three musketeers, the three blind mice, and Goldilocks and the three bears. Also, the majority of plays are written in three acts, and the recommended guideline for the storytelling arc is comprised of  a three-act structure.(Are you sensing a trend?)

Then there's comedy.

Think about all the jokes you've heard that begin with a grouping of three whatevers walking into a bar.

And many jokes rely on a three-part punch line, too. Like this one: I can't think of anything worse after a night of drinking than waking up next to someone and not being able to remember their name, or how you met, or why they're dead. [Laura Knightlinger]

[courtesy of wikipedia]

How about the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil monkeys? (I wonder why there's no DO no evil...)








Many well-known phrases are more memorable because of the effective use of threesomes:

• Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
• Of the people, by the people, and for the people
• Friends, Romans, and countrymen
• Veni, vidi, vici
• Faith, hope, and charity
• Blood, sweat, and tears
• Location, location, location

And I bet you can name a bunch more of them.

But did you know that the power of three even extends into the animal kingdom? No? Well then, consider the following:

I wish I could acknowledge where those five photos came from, because they're what prompted me to write this post in the first place. A friend sent them to me many years ago, and I liked 'em, so I kept 'em. The following pics came courtesy of unsplash:

Okay, so technically, those last three aren't exactly animals... but they sure are cute, aren't they?

Sheesh. This turned into a kinda long post, considering I wrote it just so I could post those five pictures a friend... and I don't even remember which friend... sent me years ago. Still, I kinda like it.

                               I think maybe it may even deserve an award of some kind...

                                  Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

                                        Save water... take a shower with two friends...

More Fun in Charleston

Thought for the day: All good things must come to an end. (sigh)

No matter how beautiful a day may be, the sun has to eventually set, and no matter how much fun an experience may be, it, too, must end.

So I promise this'll be the last post about our 50th anniversary trip to Charleston. Then I'll find something new to bore you with.

This last post will be about two plantations in the Charleston area. Boone Hall, located in Mt. Pleasant, has been dubbed the #1 plantation by USA Today, and called a must-see destination by many, so that was our first plantation stop. But that wasn't the only reason. I'd seen pictures of the entry to that plantation... and there's a good chance you have, too, because it's a rather iconic shot. If you saw the movie North and South, you might remember the scene with Patrick Swayze riding on horseback down that entryway road. The plantation was also featured in numerous other flicks, like The Notebook. So me being me, even though we'd already visited the mighty Angel Oak, I wanted to see this impressive line-up of live oaks in person.

Boone Hall was founded in 1681 by Englishman Major John Boone, and it was his son who planted the 88 live oaks in 1743. It took nearly two centuries for the trees to become large enough to form a canopy over the road, and this Avenue of Oaks extends for 3/4 of a mile.

A view of the canopy from the car. Believe, me, it looks a lot more impressive in person than it does in this picture.

This one was taken on foot. A little better.

 

The Avenue of Oaks offered the most concentrated grouping of live oaks on the plantation, but they weren't the only ones in sight. They were all over the place... and they were all gorgeous.

Last shot of the trees. I (ahem) tend to get carried away...

The old cotton mill (circa O-L-D) is an impressive-looking building. As you can see, it's currently undergoing some extensive restoration. 

It's kinda funny that I took a picture of THIS, but not a single photo of the plantation house. Without a doubt, it is beautiful, but what I would've really liked to capture is its interior. The furnishings are magnificent, and the sunroom-like area is fabulous. Unfortunately, taking pictures inside was a no-no. The McRae family purchased the plantation in 1955, and a year later, the family began allowing tours. Family members still live on the upper level of the home... which was not part of the tour. Although the number of farmed acreage has shrunk over time, Boone Hall remains America's oldest continuously working plantation.

A handful of original slave cabin remain, and they're all made of bricks... which were made by the slaves themselves. In fact, millions of bricks were made on the plantation, and they were used to build many important buildings in Charleston and far beyond. Ft. Sumter was constructed of bricks that were made at Boone Hall.

Each of the remaining cabins has been converted into small museums, each one telling a different chapter in the story of  African Americans. This gal in the picture told the story of the Gullah people, and her presentation included some awesome music. Man, does she ever have some pipes! And she sang a little bit of everything...

I delighted in the music of Africa, the earliest of the slave plantation songs, the transformation into Christianity and all that Christianity brought to the lives of the Africans who were forced to come to America. [Harry Belafonte]

I'm a little sorry I didn't take more pictures. I guess I was too busy taking in the experience to bother recording much of it. Sorry... how selfish of me not to think of you guys. HA! Here... maybe this short video will make up for it. (And I don't know how the sneaky fella got away with taking a couple shots inside of the house. I wish he would've gotten the darned sunroom!)                                       

                                                                Pretty cool, huh?

The other plantation we visited was the Charleston Tea Plantation... the ONLY large-scale commercial tea plantation in America. There, we toured the area where the tea is processed, sampled all kinds of their awesome teas, took a wagon ride all around the plantation, learned a ton of stuff about tea, and... came home with a whole grocery-sized bag full of teas. (Which I'm drinking my way through quite handily. I just ordered some more of their loose leaf tea from Amazon. The peach and mint are my favorites.)

This is one of the many fields of tea. See how flat the plants are on top? That's because the process of harvesting entails skimming off a couple inches of new growth at the top of the bushes. Every plant on the plantation today is the offspring of the plants originally brought to South Carolina in the 1700s, and for hundreds of years, each plant has been grown from shoots, which are nurtured in greenhouses for four years before taking their place in the fields.

This funny-looking contraption is called the Green Machine,and it was built specifically for harvesting tea. There are only a few of them in existence in the world, and each machine can do the work of 500 people. Where people would have to carefully pick the new growth leaves from each bush by hand, one at a time, this machine gently slices off that new growth and tosses it into a bin.

Did you know the three basic types of tea all come from the same plant? The difference between black, oolong, and green tea lies not in the tea, but in how long it's processed after it's picked.

SOME FUN FACTS ABOUT TEA:

• Tea-drinking dates back to 2700 B.C. Not sure how it was first discovered to be such a tasty beverage, but rumor has it that some tea leaves accidentally fell into a pot of water that was being boiled for his consumption, and Chinese Emperor Shen Nung was so pleased with the taste, he mandated that they be purposely added to his water every day after that. 
• Tea became immensely popular in China and Japan, where it was considered both health-enhancing and mystical. It wasn't introduced to the Western world until the time of Marco Polo's explorations in the 1600s.
• Tea is a member of the camellia family. Its proper name is Camellia Sinensis.
• America provided two innovations for tea: the tea bag, and iced tea. Tea bags are now popular all over the world, but iced tea? Not so much. About 85% of the tea consumed in the U.S. is iced, but it has never become popular anywhere else in the world. 
• Tea is the world's most popular beverage after water.
• Approximately 6 billion pounds of tea are produced every year, enough to provide every man, woman, and child with 200 cups per day. (I'm doing MY part... are YOU?)
• The boiling water you pour over your tea bag or loose tea releases the caffeine. To reduce the amount of caffeine by 65%, pour boiling water over your teabag or loose tea... and then dump it out and pour some fresh water on the bag or tea. Ta DA!

                                                         Gee... suddenly... I'm very thirsty...

                                    Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

P.S. Many thanks to all of you who left a comment on my last post, even though I wasn't available to respond. I appreciate the heck out of it. And you. We were chilling in western North Carolina with some friends who live at the top of a mountain. Lots of fun, and after seeing bear scat up there, I won't be grumbling so much about the piles neighborhood dogs leave in our yard. And Geo? Your comment gave me cause to pause, but although your account is terrific, our Huong was most definitely trying to get a rise out of me. :)