Traffic, Patience, and Life

Well this is it, my first blog post ever. Those of you who know me know that I do not like to read, let alone write. So if it is a bit rough, I apologize. Let me first start off by saying that our trip to Tennessee was a lot of fun. It was really great to hang out with Jeff and Annie and to get out of town. Now, I also want to let you know that I am my father's son and have little to no patience. The trip down was good.....for about an hour and half until a semi and another car decide to swerve into my lane while going 75. This is going to be a long post, hang in there people. Most vehicles are equipped with turn signals. USE THEM people! Seriously, replacing car parts is not cheap or fun and lives can not be replaced. Ridiculous. When patrons pull this maneuver they get the Tony look of death. If you ever want to see it, make me really mad. They used to get a whole lot more than that, but I am working on my anger issues. I feel sometimes I could crawl in the back seat to make sure people get the full effect of the face I am giving as I pull around them. No brake checks or retaliation is usually required the face says it all. Now lets discuss passing and cruise control. Passing may be the easiest thing ever done. If you are in the passing lane, pass. If not then get over. It kills me to see people who are not passing other cars just ride out the passing lane like they own it. Mirrors can often be very handy. Tony's Rule of the Road # 34: If you have more than 5 cars stacked up behind you in your mirror and you are not passing cars, move over. It is so dangerous, people do not even realize it. Moving on......Cruise control. I am not and idiot and I realize not all cars have cruise control. However, it is NOT hard to maintain a constant speed without it. This constant passing a car, and them passing you back gets so annoying. Especially if this person pins you in the right lane behind a car you are about to pass. You know what I am talking about, you all do. People are stupid, it takes more gas to constantly speed up and slow down then it does to go a constant speed. So this all took place on the way down. The way back was not too bad.....except for construction. Readers, if there is a sign that says Left Lane Ends 2 miles.......It is going to end in 2 miles, hence the traffic back up for the last 10 miles. Why continue to speed through the left lane until the last minute. Lets be honest, most of the time this does not get you anywhere. Second of all, if traffic is bumper to bumper anyway, why risk squeezing your car in at the last minute to possibly wreck and delay your time even more. It is simple, merge as soon as possible when it is safe. Right lane, alternate allowing cars until everyone merges. Traffic would not have to stop or slow if people did this. I know you are reading this and it appears to be common sense, but think about it. How many times have you been in one of these situations? How many times have you caused one of these situations? Some people are so oblivious about what they are doing on the road. I honestly feel give some people cars is like give babies thumb tacks. It is never good. (SIDE NOTE: These people can be identified as 1 or more corners of their car has a lens or headlight missing and there is often body damage too.) It all boils down to common courtesy. It is a quality we seem to lack in our busy lives. Now extrapolate all of this out. Think about the time, lives, money, gas, oil, Earth.....UNIVERSE that could be saved it everyone drove like Tony. Thanks for reading....I feel better.

Tennessee

What a busy yet wonderful long weekend! We headed down to Tennessee on Thursday to visit the brother and sister-in-law, Jeff and Annie. Annie made a yummy dinner that night and we really just chilled, catching up and playing Wii. Friday we got up and went out to play disk golf. It is really fun but is certainly not my strongest sport! I did get better as we went although I am not sure that I can say the same for Tony, haha. Actually he was pretty good except the time I told Annie to watch out and then I was the one that ended up getting hit in the ankle three feet away by Tony!! :0) It was sooooo hot!! We went to the Y to swim. I thought we had a nice gym...boy you ain't seen nothing yet! The pool area was really sweet and felt so refreshing! Annie and I are apparently kids at heart because we jumped in line more than once for the slides! We got some goofy looks from the guys at the top, but who cares, it was fun! We went that evening out to dinner then to the drive in theater. We saw Transformers and Star Trek. Really great!! Saturday was went to the Belle Meade plantation and took a tour. Very interesting. We went to dinner downtown and then walked the Nashvegas strip. We stopped in Tootsies to listen to a group for a few minutes but it is way small and cramped. We ended up just going back to the apartment to play games. We got up and went to church on Sunday. Their church is not really huge for Nashville but is certainly much bigger than our own! Two of the guys from Sonic Flood lead worship which was neat. Those guys have such a God given talent at leading worship. You can see how passionately they are just worshiping. We headed home after lunch and unfortunately hit a major back up for such little construction. It was so wonderful to spend time with those two! We really miss them and cherish our time together. They are such wonderful hosts too! :0)

Vacation

Well, as always, vacation was quite the adventure filled with awkward and strange happenings. It seemed as though every time I saw something that sounded like a great idea to do always turned out to be a bust. I thought it would be great to go take a ferry ride across the local lake. Having never been on a ferry, I was really excited about this. Once we arrived to the ferry we discovered that it only took you about 100 feet across to the other side of the lake. Later, I noticed an ad on our key card that mentioned buy two games of bowling, get one free. Sounded like fun, so again we went exploring. We got past where it should be so we turned around only to discover a really run down, crappy looking building that was not only closed, but was for sale! Someone REALLY needed to update their key cards!! Tony had some good ideas that worked out better than mine...Soo Locks and the dune ride being a couple of them. I think my favorite memory from the trip was the "Pasties" signs we kept seeing. Say that word to yourself for a moment and think about it. If you come up with something that sounds like the word "paste" (as in glue) with an "ies" on the end...then bless you because that is what we thought we were seeing. Little did we know it was pronounced "past (as in not the present) -ies". We decided to stop at a store that had one of these signs and the conversation between Tony and the young man behind the counter went something like this: Man - "Can I help you folks?" Tony - "Yeah, we kept seeing theses signs on the road and had to stop in and see what "pasties" (as in glue pronunciation) are. After a moment of silence and puzzled looks the man begins to giggle. Man- "oh you me pasties (as in not the present pronunciation). I know what they are now, but has anyone else every heard of these things?!?