St. Louis Highway Personalities

Starting my full time job at the Challenger Center has introduced me to the fact that each highway in St. Louis has drivers of certain personalities. For most of my tenure in St. Louis, I have driven highway 64/40. But now the CLC job has me driving highway 70 to and from work. I have now realized that drivers on 64/40 are fairly decent human beings with the occassional jerky driver while highway 70 is filled with selfish assholes! Prime example (though far from being unusual on 70):

While getting onto 70 on my home from work the other day, I was trying to merge onto the entrance ramp for 70. There was a brand new, fire engine red Mustang to my left and slightly behind. There was just enough room for me to turn on my blinker to nicely let her know that's where I wanted to go. So what does this driver do? SPEEDS UP and doesn't let me in. I HAVE to merge otherwise I'll end up exiting onto another road that I don't need to be on. So I let her get far enough up so I can pull behind her (where there is a whole line of cars BTW). As I pull in behind her, I beeped at her to let her know that I didn't appreciate her actions. She not only sped up to prevent me from merging, but she then, get this, sticks her hand out the sun roof and flips me the bird. I was pissed. Later that day, I thought about it and realized that if someone told me about that story I'd laugh my ass off, so I laughed it off and let it go. That's when it hit me that all my bad highway experiences have happened either on 70 or on the Poplar Street Bridge (which incidentally carries I-70 drivers over to Illinois).

FYI, I-270 is St. Louis' version of NASCAR. The speed limit hovers around 85 or 90, with people whipping around each other like they are Jeff Gordon or Dale Earnhardt, Jr. This includes little old ladies in their ginormous Cadillacs and hoosiers in their jacked up F-250's (you know, the ones that have Confederate flags and decals of Calvin peeing on Osama).

I have yet to drive I-370. Although, there have been a couple of wrong way driving accidents on that highway, so my guess is that 370 drivers are morons. Not certain of that yet, it's just a theory.

Please let me know about highways 44 and 55, as I don't drive them enough to know.

Quick update

Went to see the doctor about the not sleeping because of twitchy, restless legs, and he believes it is "Restless Legs Syndrome" brought on by the trauma of the surgery and the stress from the new job. Prescribed Ambien, my new best friend. Ambien is not the typical treatment for restless legs, but I tried it the night before I saw the doc, it worked so he wrote me a script for more. I now use it in fear of staying awake or being awoken by those restless legs.

Started the new job at Challenger Learning Center and I LOVE it. I'm busy every second of the day, but that's good because the hours just fly by. My job has many many aspects to it, and right now we are running on a skeleton crew for missions, so I don't have much time to work on non-mission related duties. (huh-huh, I said "duty") On my second day, my boss and co-worker (yes, there are only three of us in the office on a dialy basis) took me out to lunch. That day I found out that not only is my boss pregnant, but so is my co-worker. So I kind of feel left out like that, BUT I am SO NOT ready for a baby right now. Between the recuperating, new job and restless legs, I could not handle a baby.

Not sleeping is for the birds

OK, so what the hell is wrong with me lately?! I have not been sleeping right. The other morning I was up at 4:30 a.m., and now I can't get to sleep. This is so messed up.

Anyway, so all those plans of things I wanted to get done while recuperating at home?? None of them done. I'm so darn tired every day, just the smallest things wear me out. After a shower I have to rest for a few minutes before I can finish getting ready. Going out and running an errand almost requires a nap when I get home. But my energy levels are slowly getting better.

Part of this not sleeping thing is that my legs feels weird, like I need to move. So I get up, walk a couple rounds around my home interior, then sit down because I'm tired. Then my legs want to walk again, so I'm off like a race horse, walking around and around until I'm tired again. Or until the cat finally pisses me off enough that I have to sit down so she'll quit attacking my legs while I walk. It's like she knows something isn't right. She is probably thinking, "why the hell is Mommy up? She never comes back out into the living room this fast after she's gone to bed... what's wrong with her?"

OK, I'm thinking like I'm the cat. I really need sleep.

Screw the rooster, I was up before him!

Yeah, so I woke up at 4:30 this morning. No alarm, no major storm, just woke up. Totally awake. So I got out of bed so I wouldn't toss and turn and wake up my hubby. When I got out to the living room, I decided to check my e-mail and various blogs. While looking through Jessi's blog, I remembered that she had a link to get a copy of my credit report. So I figured it might be good to look through my credit stuff and see how it all looked. While on the site, I went ahead and purchased my credit score to get a full picture of what it all meant. My score kicks butt!!! I'm only like 40 points lower than my parents' score, which is above 800 (a VERY GOOD score). This is awesome. I'm so looking forward to finding out what Ben's score is. I bet it's close to mine since they are now linked. I'm just so stoked. I hope this means that we'll get a good loan when we go to buy a house later this year/early next year.

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you thought I was geeky before...

I have surpassed my own geekiness today. This morning I actually got bored playing Bejeweled and Jewel Quest, so I started playing Ben's Role-Playing-Game, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I thought at first, "Oh, I'll just make up a character and see how close I can get to having her look like me..."

That took all of 10 minutes. I still wasn't ready to go back and play an Arcade game... so I thought, "Well, let's see how long I last until I get my ass kicked by something in the game, then I'll quit."

About 2 hours later, I saved my game and called Ben. He must have been busy because I had to leave him a voicemail. In said voicemail, I told him this..."Honey, I just wanted you to know that I am now addicted to Oblivion." When he came home for lunch, he was so proud of me. And I CONTINUED to play until 3 p.m.!! At that point, I decided that I should at least put some laundry in the washer and get cleaned up.

I can't believe that I am now an official gamer. Not just a girly arcade player, but an official gamer. Now I have to go back on and try to kill some Demons from Oblivion (the game's version of Hell). They were really the reason I stopped playing earlier. Those bastards must have killed me about 5 times before I gave up. Maybe I'll wait til Ben gets home and have him be my Guide Master. Oh my God, I'm a dork.

P.S. Jessi and Craig are probably laughing their butts off right now... that's OK. I think it's totally funny too. Let me know what you think in my comments section!!