Apparently, we're not cranking them out quick enough here

Distracted drivers are one of my biggest pet peeves. If you are on the road, pay attention dammit. Hell, if you are in a car at all pay attention. Coming out of my apartment building, there is a long driveway that spills out onto Delaware Ave. This morning, I drove to the end of it and stopped, waiting the space that you can cruise onto Delaware. When this Lexus IN THE FUCKING DRIVEWAY!?!?! decides to back up without looking and side swipes us. I say us because my kids have been with me this week and two off them were in the car.

That ups my inner crazy level more. The impact wasn't that big a deal. On my car, you really can't tell anything was wrong, but it was enough to wake you up. She manages to trap me in my door with the back half of her car on Delaware. I crawl out of my passenger side and direct her to just pull forward without adjusting the steering wheel so the two vehicles were free. We were able to both inspect and it was largely much ado over nothing. She was classy enough to apologize to my kids, promising to look, etc.

We exchanged info, but I can't really find anything wrong that I can't fix with a paintbrush (and a small one at that). Kids have a helluva story to start the day at school. I guess this journal is one of the few I've written to get it out of my head so I can be productive today. I drove to work and everything seems fine.

After getting a look at my kids faces and the lack of anything substantive on the car, I'm letting it go. But Holy Shit am I awake now.

One of the tremendous upsides of my new location is literally having Delaware Park out the back door. A handful of colleagues and I went out to do a lap around the ring road at lunchtime. About a third of the way around, we saw a guy with a bunch of pitbull puppies playing off to the side of the road. A dad and his daughter (I presume) stopped their walk to see the dogs, so the five of us did too. Dogs are happy and bounding around and it was a nice few minutes. Never dawned on any of us that the dude wasn't taking his pups out for a romp, but was looking the peddle each puppy for profit and turns out is wanted by the cops.

Talk about letting your guard down.

Cuteness can make you stupid.

A man was sick and tired of going to work every day while his
wife stayed home.

He wanted her to see what he went through so he prayed:

"Dear Lord: I go to work every day and put in 8 hours while my
wife merely stays at home. I want her to know what I go through, so
please allow her body to switch with mine for a day. Amen."

God, in his infinite wisdom, granted the man's wish.

The next morning, sure enough, the man awoke as a woman. -

He arose, cooked breakfast for his mate, awakened the kids,
set out their school clothes, fed them breakfast, packed their lunches, drove them to school, came home and picked up the dry cleaning, took it to the cleaners and stopped at the bank to make a deposit, went grocery shopping, then drove home to put away the
groceries, paid the bills and balanced the check book.

He cleaned the cat's litter box and bathed the dog.

Then it was already 1P.M. and he hurried to make the beds,

do the laundry, vacuum, dust, and sweep and

Mop the kitchen floor.

Ran to the school to pick up the kids and

got into an argument with them on the way home.

Set out milk and cookies and

got the kids organized to do their homework,

then set up the ironing board and

watched TV while he did the ironing.

At 4:30 he began peeling potatoes and

washing vegetables for salad,

breaded the pork chops and

snapped fresh beans for supper.

After supper, he cleaned the kitchen,

ran the dishwasher,

folded laundry,

bathed the kids, and put them to bed.

At 9 P.M. he was exhausted and, though his daily chores weren't
finished,

he went to bed where he was expected to make love, which he
managed to get through without complaint.

The next morning, he awoke and immediately knelt by the bed and
said:

-"Lord, I don't know what I was thinking. I was so wrong to envy
my

wife's being able to stay home all day. Please, oh! oh! please,
let us

trade back."

The Lord, in his infinite wisdom, replied:

"My son, I feel you have learned your lesson and I will be
happy to change things back to the way they were. You'll just have to
wait nine months though. You got pregnant last night."

Okay, it's another work related post, but it's my first week so deal. We were setting up for this kid friendly Halloween event last night and I was laughing about the whole thing. We were setting up trick or treat stations throughout the zoo under the watchful eye of the animals. They do pay attention when something weird is going on.

Along one of the back walk ways a coworker and myself built this little station right next to the black manaque monkeys, five of which came right to the window so see what was up. The Serval two doors down did the same thing. We had a couple of pallets of donated cookies that went into the roon under the watchful eye of one of the Buffalos, who was none too pleased when a pallet slipped off the forklift. It's a little creepy and kind of cool at the same time. There are three windows in the gorilla house and last night, the gorillas were doing all the looking, like they were inspecting.

I didn't get nervous until I had to set up a larger exhibit in the reptile house where we were going to crank out cider and donuts for revelers. To get from where the snacks were to the party locale, I had to go through one of those off limits areas. The one I went through was were some of the off limited animals were hanging. A Snow leopard took careful note when I came schlepting through with cups and whatnot. When myself and a colleague made another pass through, this time with 15 dozen donuts, I swear he shot me a look that said "C'mon man, help a four legged brother out and toss me a few..."

Or maybe not, but this is shaping up to be cool place to work. Downside is I have to work next saturday night till about 9 so if I can make it to the 24 for the party, my costume will probably a decent 43 year old who had to work that day.