This is just going to be a random-stuff entry. Be forewarned. The only knitting related stuff I did yesterday evening was to finish the back of Ginger and start sewing her up.

1. Driving home yesterday, I saw Driverus recklesseae ssp. inahurryus* These folks were using the PARKING LOTS that lined the street to pass people (First Street in my town is one of the main arteries and it is two-lane: a northbound lane and a southbound lane. So if you're super impatient, you can't pass people. Except people sometimes try, by going into a parking lot, roaring through it, and trying to nose out in front of someone. It annoys me and I think it's potentially dangerous). These people tried to do it to me in the car wash parking lot. Then they got in behind me and roared through the Dollar Store** parking lot and tried to go into the liquor store parking lot (which would be the Holy Grail of driving rules cheats; it would allow them to circumvent waiting at the stoplight to turn from First onto Mulberry.)

I saw them do this. I also have to turn from First onto Mulberry to get home, and I sat there at the light, saying to myself, "don't turn out in front of me. Don't turn out so fast you smack into my right front fender as I'm coming legally around the turn."

Well, when the light changed, I saw that the impatient folks had lost at their little game: two cars parked at the liquor store in such a way that it prevented them from pulling out. I saw them backing up through the parking lot (probably another risky move) to try to get back out into the stream of traffic.

And I admit it: I laughed, sitting there in my car. Laughed because for once, someone following the rules (me) got ahead of someone who was cheating.

(*Does anyone else remember the Roadrunner cartoons where they used to start off giving fake scientific names for both the Roadrunner and the Coyote? Or is my remembering that specific fact just further proof of my inborn science-geekery?)

(** We have what I think is an unnatural number of dollar stores in my town - 4 or 5 in a town of 14,000. And this is also with a Wal-Mart and a Big Lots. I don't really see the attraction of dollar stores - every time I've ever gone into one looking for something, they don't have it. I guess it's more a gatherer-type store where you keep your options open than a hunter-type store where you go in saying "I need nine-volt batteries and Excedrin Migraine and I will not be happy until I find them.")

2. I've taken up yoga again after nearly a year's hiatus. I'm slowly regaining some of the flexibility. I'm doing it mainly because...

3. I'm having bad nights right now - interrupted sleep, bad dreams (not bad in the nightmare sense so much as bad in the sense of me waking up and either going "the heck?" or feeling like I've not slept.) It's like I have so much going on in my brain right now that it's struggling to process during the time I'm awake, and so it has to work overtime when I'm sleeping. The yoga helps some - at least with falling asleep early on. Not so much with staying asleep though.

4. One more week of teaching and then exams. As I said earlier, this time of year is just the point where familiarity breeds contempt.

5. There are two things happening this weekend - there's a quilt show about an hour away from me, and a German-fest about an hour and a half away. I'm not going to either because of the price of gas. I'd like to go to one but I just can't justify the cost. Especially since I'm driving to Sherman tonight (probably; there probably won't be room in the church van for everyone. I'm really hoping I won't have to drive kids, or if I do, they will be quiet ones. I don't want to have to pull out my Wicked Witch of the West voice and also threaten them with "don't make me stop this car." Especially since I'm holding the money for the trip - if things get too bad, I don't have the option of turning around and going back. (But I am not going to let them know that.). And I'm providing the food (cookout) next week.

of course, probably in the middle of summer, there will be a week when gas drops below $2 a gallon and there will be NOTHING HAPPENING THAT IS WORTH GOING TO. That's the way it always works - when I have the time and the inclination, there's nothing. When there's something really cool, I'm either too busy or too worried about the state of my finances to do it.

I will say the German-fest sounded less tempting when they said on the news that "probably 40,000 people" would show up for it. It's in a small, small town - smaller than the one where I live - and the thought of sharing the sidewalks with 39,999 other people, some of whom have overimbibed, some of whom will be children complaining about the boringness of it - well, I'm happier I'm not going.

6. I was going to bring knitting for the exam I was proctoring this morning and I just realized I forgot it at home. Crud. So I guess I'm going to try to find something to read (or maybe a final exam for a different class to re-write) to bring with me.