Fun Commute Stories!

[miko2]

As most of you know, I live in the Bitterlake Area North of Greenwood and South of... I forget. Oh yeah, Shoreline. It's in North Seattle. And I work in Auburn, which is South of Kent, which is South of Renton, which is... too far South of Seattle.

So anyway, it's Friday. Friday traffic is always worse. I'm not sure why... I guess everyone leaves work early so they can get stuck in traffic sooner or something. And there's a big accident on the valley freeway (167). What's a Friday commute without an accident on 167, after all? I always take the valley freeway to work, because while it sucks, I-5 usually sucks worse.

So I'm stuck in traffic behind this wreck (interesting side note: there was a car that had rear-ended a truck, which had clearly slammed head-first into something else. His front end was accordioned something fierce. The aid trucks had only JUST arrived, having passed me a minute earlier, and were talking to the guy in the truck -- he was still inside. But for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what the truck had hit. Did they just drive off? No clue.)

So anyway, I'm stuck in traffic, going nowhere, enduring the insufferable heat, windows down, blasting my new Feels So Bad cd at full volume, and I notice that the guy in the jeep next to me (and his friend) are yelling at me. So I turn down the music, and have the following conversation:

Him: Hey! What's that squirrel thing? On the back bumper?

Me: (Realizing he's talking about the Ryo-Ohki vinyl stencil that Sky put there). It's from an anime. It's a cabbit -- cat-rabbit.

Him: Are you an animator?

Me: Uh... no!

I should have said yes. ^_^

I had a fun commute home too. Usually it's fairly quiet on the drive home... after Midnight after all. Fridays you get more stupid people with cars that go too fast. And they've been doing construction on I-5 Northbound, starting just South of Northgate, my normal exit, and they're blocking off several lanes, leaving just one open, so I learned after one trip through all of that to take the earlier exit at 85th street and avoid sitting in traffic for five or ten minutes.

Only tonight, there were cop cars everywhere and a big fire engine blocking off the 85th street exit. I didn't see an accident, but clearly there was one somewhere. And there are a lot more cars on the road, many of them driven by stupid people, and so I was stuck in traffic for well over half an hour trying to crawl my way to the Northgate Exit (I travelled one mile in about 30 minutes or so). And all of these stupid people are driving on the shoulders, switching lanes left and right (like it mattered), jumping over into the on-ramp lane so that they can speed around ten cars and merge again... a bunch of them decided to just ignore the plastic barrell barriers and drive through the area that was blocked off for the construction crews. Too bad all of the cops were too busy with their accident, I wanted to see some idiots get nailed.

---

Fun is a cd full of cheesy operatic Japanese metal!

I'm sure Sky will understand. ^_^ I bought a cd wallet (holds 100 cds) for a buck at PC Club last week, and my plan is to burn copies of all the cds that I lug to work every day, and only carry copies of them to work, so that if they get thrashed or stolen, I won't care. So among other things I've burned copies of most of my Feels So Bad collection, Hem, the latest from the Tea Party, Ruth MacKenzie's Kalevala, two Varttina cds, the soundtracks from Princess Mononoke and Key the Metal Idol, and a few other odds and ends.

And while I was at it, I took my three Revolutionary Girl Utena CDs and compiled a single CD with all of the goofy operatic metal songs.

Utena is an odd series, and it uses a very wide selection of music. Some of it is Classical-influenced, with piano or strings, some is jazz-influenced, some of it is modern pop music. But whenever Utena Tenjou travels into the secret forest at the back of the school to duel a member of student council (and much of the plot revolves around these duels), the background music changes to these weird 70's-style metal tunes with strange lyrics and big chorus vocals. The series is 48 episodes long (if I remember correctly) and so there are three soundtrack cds, and scattered through them are nearly 30 of these weird metal opera tunes.

I don't know why I like them so much. They're not great metal, but the melodies aren't bad. I'm happy to finally have them all on a single cd. ^_^

Now I need to compile all my favorite Feels So Bad songs onto one cd. The two new ones I got this week rock! "Get Happy" which I want to make into the title of a Ranma 1/2 story, and "Across A Rainbow", which is quickly turning into one of my favorites, as good as "Psychic Virus", "Son Of A Bitch 2000" and "Virtual Vacation".

Sky wants copy of Get Happy/Across A Rainbow, yes?

And I need to make copies of my two covers cds for CD da bluesman. I guess the one I handed him a few months ago didn't work.

And... did anyone that didn't get a copy of my "Tai-Pan BBQ" mix cd want one? It really has nothing to do with the bbq, except that I made it and handed it out at the bbq.