Thoughts from the Road

For work today, I did deed research in Cabell County, about an hour away. I love courthouse work. I get to drive, the work is sometimes interesting (like a puzzle, trying to find out what happened with someone's property), and no one bugs me. And it seems like any drive that lasts more than 30 minutes allows my brain to wander, gives me time to really take in some good music, and lets me be attentive to the funny or interesting things I pass.

So, today I thought...

Wow! My taste in music is so very eclectic. (Does everyone say that?) Anyway, my favorite style of music cycles from one genre to another all the time. Right now I find myself listening a lot to Queen, Blondie, and Meatloaf. It's surprising how well those artists go together on a playlist. I think they're artists whose music was/is different than anything else out there, and powerful in sort of an energetic kind of way. Many of the songs are in my repertoire of those I sing loudly when I'm in the car by myself. My greatest hits: Bohemian Rhapsody (No, No, No, No, NO, NO, NO!!!), Two Out of Three Ain't Bad (...but there ain't no Coupe de Ville hiding at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box...), and One Way or Another. I'm also digging on a lot of old disco right now. (Stop laughing.) Play that Funky Music makes me dance in my chair every time. That's some of the original Cowbell style, you know! And for you youngsters out there, here's an interesting, albeit trivial, thing about Bohemian Rhapsody: although there's speculation that the lyrics are rooted in Freddie Mercury's family's deep involvement in Zoroastrianism, when interviewed about the song, Mercury himself insisted that the lyrics were just "random, rhyming nonsense."

If you have a die-cut "In Memory Of..." decal on your car, and you have to remove it because you're selling the car, does the faint image of the decal appear whenever the windows fog up? If so, does this freak the new owner out? And if that happens, does the car get sold and resold, like one would with a haunted house, never telling the next owner what they're in for? Finally, would I ever want my friends and family expressing their "memory" of me on a bumper sticker?

As I passed by Barbie's Formals (a dress shop), I wondered, "Do all the dresses inside look something like this..."
I love my iPod. The thing that bugs me is trying to listen to it in the car with my current equipment. The only thing I've got so far to get the music from the iPod out through the car speakers is the radio transmitter thing. First of all, no matter what, there's a decent amount of static as a result of this process. Secondly, if you're "in town," then it's too hard to keep the radio tuned to a station that's adequately distant from the transmitter's frequency. If you're driving from one town to another, you're likely to notice the static getting worse when you get closer to the town (when your transmitter, again, is set on a frequency and there happens to be a station in the area close to that setting). I've got my eye on this contraption but, after factoring in installation costs, and the fact my OCD would require me to have one for each vehicle, the purchase would definitely be a luxury and a special treat.

And I wonder if the person driving behind me on the back road from Barboursville to Milton thought I was a maniac. First of all, my car's looking a little rough. It's six years old, sufficiently "dinged," and currently filthy. The last one is not only because cleaning the car is about the lowest thing on my priority list, but also because the rubber around the antenna is dry rotted, so the antenna is rockin the gangsta lean. Anyway, I can't take it through the automatic car wash. So I'm driving along in my usual...ummm...expeditious style and this lady in front of me started to merge into the turning lane to our left. She slowed way down and, calculating my ability to just glide on by her, I kept going pretty much straight. But she changed her mind and decided to turn left from the driving lane. I had to brake pretty aggressively to not hit her then, in my super-quick, lightening-style thinking, went to her right when I realized I might hit her anyway. Since Mario Andretti and I share the same birthday, this maneuver allowed me to reaccelerate. The whole time, I'm aware of the car behind me, in case the thing with me and Ms. Doesn't-Know-The-Rules-Of-Turning-Left causes them to plow into me, in which case I would have activated my force field immediately before the would-be impact. A minute later, I came around a slight turn which was angled just enough to hide this fairly big piece of styrofoam which was right in the middle of the road. I plowed into it and it smashed into a million pieces...then blew out of the back of my car like a tiny-beaded smokescreen. Of course, there was no need to slow down then...the damage had been done. I wonder if static electricity caused tons of those little things to stick to their car. THAT would be funny.