soapbox

I’m here in sunny Florida, at the Ron Jon resort on the cape, and I have to say … I don’t miss the snow one bit. It is actually somewhat chilly now but I got a bit of a sun burn today by the pool as it seemed everyone else had important shit to do and I got left so a day by the pool/ocean wasn’t the worst punishment. Happy hour by the pool, and good seafood for dinner.

I do however have to go to bed early so we can get up and go talk to local school kiddies about our project and the launch tomorrow. The lounging and sleeping is done I think and we unfortunately have some “work” to do down here. Hopefully it all goes off without a hitch, but who knows. Cross your fingers …

I’ve always been impressed with British Public Service Announcements, often going for shock value taht wouldn’t fly over here. anyway, I’m listening to Virgin Radio (thus the “tele” category, since there’s none for radio) just played one something like this:

voiceover:”this is the sound of your car hitting a child at 40mph”
[car-crash/crunching noise]
voiceover:”and this is the sound of your car hitting a child at 30mph”
[same car-crashing noice, followed by a child crying]

child’s voice: “if you hit me at 40mph, there’s an 80% chance I’ll die, but if you hit me at 30mph, there’s an 80% chance that I’ll survive.”

interesting.

I drove up from CT last night since Kirsten had to leave early for a conference of her own.

Anyway, two complaints…

First, my car doesn’t like side-winds. It really gets blown all over the place and makes driving much less fun. The good news is that it was only really windy in CT and MA and the roads were mostly bare and dry.

Second, VT needs to plow better. They’re either trying to save money by plowing less, salting less, or the last two days’ weather was just too much for them. From Brattleboro to about Springfield, the road was largely covered with half-inch-thick broken up ice. In parts though, it was bare and dry, so when you saw a light patch on the road, you couldn’t tell if it was going to be ice (so you didn’t want to put your tires there) or pavement (so you did want your tires there). There’s nothing worse than feeling the car squirm a tire-width to the side when you guess wrong either.

It also didn’t help that there was a minivan using my speed as the “safe speed” and tailgating me at times.

There are a rapidly diminishing number of chocolate no-bake cookies in my office if y’all would like them.