Author: bob

My local post office still has one of the stamp machines that dispenses dollar coins as change. It has a sign bearing witness to this fact in big red letters. Naturally I couldn’t resist buying a book of stamps with a $20. I hate to see a good currency go underutilized.

The machine poured forth eleven dollars in coins. 8 Sacagaweas and 3 Susan B.s. In Canada, whole dollar coins (loonies and twonies) are used as a matter of course. My experience in Toronto was that I had a lot less useless change than here in the states. Things tended to be priced in round numbers so I wouldn’t wind up with 30 pennies in my pocket at the end of the day. Why can’t the U.S. adopt this practice? I blame the Coinstar lobby. Once our hyperinflation takes hold and the dollar is demoted to a quarter, perhaps the practice will become more widespread.

I went to buy a Gatorade-brand sports drink with a pair of coins, a Suze and a Sac. The cashier stared at the change for a while and I eventually had to help her out, telling her it was two dollars, like it says on the back of each coin. She short-changed me $.75 anyway. That damn Ms. Anthony! Next time I’ll pay more attention, and I think I’ll also be sure to use Susan B.s only in a context in which it cannot mathematically be confused with a quarter. But the honeymoon isn’t spoiled yet; I still have money to burn. Or melt, as it were.

There’s some sort of machismo tied to how awful the traffic is in your city. Who doesn’t look on the ten worst traffic spots in the US with a little bit of pride when their city is mentioned, or disappointment when it isn’t? I am here to tell Atlantans that I’ve seen worse traffic than the usual downtown connector clusterfuck. I’ve seen worse traffic than DC’s beltway bridgelock. The city that has them both easily topped is Boston, and I say this solely on the basis of a few hours as a pedestrian in that fine city.

But Atlantans are a special breed of driver. Compared to Virginians, anyway, who — get this — obey most of the traffic laws. Atlanta is one of the few places where you can do 25 over the speed limit in the next-to-rightmost lane of an eight lane highway and get passed on the right by a tractor-trailer. So I got the use of my Dad’s truck this weekend. It’s a Dodge Dakota. Dakota: ten tons of bone crunching, car-crushing madness. I am not very confident piloting this behemoth, as from the height of the cab I can barely make out the ant-like vehicles in the neighboring lanes. But as I drive the old reflexes come back. Before the evening was through, I would get honked at, drive on the wrong side of the yellow line, and blare my own horn at some unsuspecting jerk. It felt good.

Forgot to mention that I’m going back home this weekend. Anyone who wants to hook up on Thursday or Friday drop me a line. Holla!

A few things I have learned from driving in a state with a crazy high number of personalized license plates:

• Just in case people can’t recognize the make and model of your car, the license plate is a great place for a helpful reminder. Oh, it’s an M3, I couldn’t tell from the branding trim all over your ride! (Yes, someone has YUGO.) Include the color too; you never know when someone might be colorblind.
• People who have QT, HOT T, or SXC somewhere in their license plate aren’t.
• I still don’t know what PIXPOO means, nor do I really want to.
• There are lots of assholes on the road. Not that that has anything to do with license plates, just saying.

I think there should be a subversive movement of low self-esteem license plates. Put out your basic insecurities for all to see. Instead of QT, why not SO FUGLY? IM DUMB? Or, if you are quite secure in yourself, let people know just how much: HUGE EGO. All of these plates are available right now in the state of Virginia!

Make your own State of Virginia license plate.

Plates that won’t make the cut.

What a weekend it has been. I left Thursday for some gambling action in AC and to send my buddy Scott off on a life of marriage. We arrived at the Borgata around 10pm, and hit the poker room where everyone else was already “flopping nuts” as they say. I signed up for a $3/$6 table and got my $140 in chips, then sat down when my name was called. First hand: pocket tens which matched up for a set on the flop. The turn made a pair on the board so I had my full house and took it to the bank. Unfortunately, that would not be a sign of luck to come. By the end of the night, I came back from a deficit to be just $4 short of what I started with, not too bad.

Friday was the day I decided that gambling is not for me. I hit a long string of 2s and 3s at the blackjack table while everyone else hit it big. I left after I had met about half of my pre-set loss limit. Then came back, to lose another third. After that, I went for a swim.

The Borgata is a nice hotel. The showers are all marble, the elevators play West Side Story on a loop, and music is piped into the heated pool, so that you can listen to it underwater.

I blew the rest of my money Friday night on more poker in a boring 2/4 game. In all it was a good time; I just think two days is a little much to spend in a casino and it would’ve been nice if the weather had been good enough to go outside. Never went to bed before 3, and I was always the first.

Saturday I returned, caught up on sleep a bit, then headed to Joe & Jes’ for a cookout. Played DDR and Karaoke R. My singing/dancing careers are about to take off.

Last night Angeline came down this way for dinner. It appears we are back together again, which is good, though not without a tiny bit of anxiety. Who didn’t see this coming besides me?

Today, I should’ve attended work again, but I had to wait for Ikea to drop off my new kitchen in flat box form. They finished up about 2pm and I figured commuting 3 hours to work two hours was pretty pointless. So I stayed here, made spaghetti and finished up my HDTV wiring without cutting any more holes in the wall.