Ugh, frustrating people

Dear person on a side street as I was hurrying to get to the Green Spray so I could get fruit and cheese quickly and then get home to practice piano before my evening meeting:

I had the right of way, being out on the main street (and you were on the side street). Yes, I saw you sort of impatiently roll out a little. Maybe I would have stopped and let you out even though I had the right of way but there was some guy barrelling along behind me and I didn't want to risk getting rear-ended and also I was in a hurry to do my stuff. Maybe you were in a hurry too, so you would understand.

But yeah, I had the right of way and you did not.

So there was no call for you to give me a one-fingered salute as I went by, just because I didn't stop to let your entitled behind pull out in front of me. Look, after I and the guy hurrying along behind me got by, there was a gap, so you'd have been slowed down by MMMMMAYBE 20 seconds. Was it really worth 20 seconds for flipping the bird at a fellow citizen?

I dunno. I despair at the level of coarseness and incivility I see some days. And yeah, I tend to let things like some random person - who very likely had a bad day and was just needing to vent - flipping the bird at me bug me, but there's still a strong streak of the little kid eating her lunch alone and wishing she had more friends that anyone who turns out to be a potential enemy rather than a friend is just a little bit extra demoralizing.

I dunno. When someone cuts me off or does something similarly unsafe I will admit to tapping my horn as a warning but that's more of a "hey, I'm here, you almost hit me" than a "fish you." A raised middle finger is hard to interpret as anything other than "fish you"

And honestly, does making another person's day worse really make your day any better? In my experience the way to make your own bad day better is to try to make someone else's day better.

***

My exam - all four versions (A, B, C, and D, they're big classes) have been made up for next week. I have another exam to write and another chapter to finish and my faculty development plan to do and the sermon to write for next week. I hope I can get much of that done Friday and Saturday because I'd really like to take at least part of Labor Day off.

***

Something is wrong with my garage door. It was hanging at a bit of an angle (not totally closed) when I got home. One of the cables was hanging a little loosely and I can't tell if it snapped or if it just got off track and partly been unwound. Dude-who-fixes-doors has been called but he doesn't know for sure when he can get out.

At least I was able to force the door open and "decouple" the thing from the drive (so I won't forget, hit the button, and bring the door crashing down) so at a minimum I can put my car under a roof until it gets fixed. My garage is kind of a mess though - it's old and off-kilter and needs to be painted or sided and really if I had all the money in the world? I'd hire someone to tear it down and build a new one similar to it. But I don't have all the money in the world and I'm guessing it would be a minimum of $10,000 for a new garage so I don't plan on getting one soon. Also the whole logistics of the thing. (Though if you hire a construction company, they do all the permitting and stuff, right? So I'm not standing in line down at the courthouse to get building permits and the like?)