Society and Fear

I was driving down this windy country road yesterday after having looked at the progress of my new home. It was starting to get a little late and storm clouds were moving in, so there was an eerie feeling in the air. I'm buzzing along at a high speed when I notice this man on the side of the road. I slow a bit, wondering what his deal is, when I notice him flailing his arms as I almost zoom past. I slammed on the brakes, realizing he was trying to flag me down.

A lot of things run through your mind in these types of situations. The first of course... do I stop? Obviously I did. The second thing I did was press the door lock as the man approached, then I kindly lowered the passenger window. I remember feeling crappy that I had to lock the doors. I'm a trusting person by nature but let's face it. I'm not stupid!

I could tell by looking at him that something wasn't quite right. He seemed very upset and he uttered the words "I'm deaf" as he presented me with a handwritten note.

This is the part where I realize I can never tell this story to my mom or she'll never sleep at night expecting that at any moment my trusting nature was going to result in a phone call that I've wound up dead in the proverbial ditch.

The note tells me that he's deaf and his father is in the hospital and he doesn't have enough money for gas to get up to the hospital. It kindly asks if he could borrow $15.00 and that he would pay me back tomorrow. And you know what? For some reason, I believed him. I motioned for him to hold on a moment as I reached for my purse (which of course was an invitation for any criminal to grab it and run - he kept his distance). I felt like crap that all I had in my wallet was a dollar bill but I hand it to him as I said "this is all I have", shaking my head from side to side and hoping he understood. He shook his head in acknowledgment and I drove off.

I'm left with a few feelings. 1) Our society is so un-tusting! 2) Why didn't he just ask me for a ride? 3) What would I have done if he did? and 4) Why do I feel like shit that all I had was a dollar?

On a lighter note...

I'm walking through the parking lot of Best Buy the other day, minding my own business. As I'm heading towards my car this other car stopped to let me walk passed and this dude leans out his window and gives me a "Hey GIRL!"...

What is that? I mean...I appreciate the implied compliment and all, but what do you suppose his response would have been if I replied with "Hey BOY!" - Mind you there was a nice... appreciative "wooo-oooohhhh" as I continued to walk on pretending as if I didn't hear--Because sometimes, honestly, it's best just to move on.

BAD idea... REALLY BAD...

Don't EVER decide to change your domain name, webhost, email host, and
the entire look of your website all at the same time. And toss in a
curve ball of having the deadline bumped up for various reasons
(including but not limited to the looming expiration date of the email
account and early server switch, to name a few) and you've got a recipe
for complete and utter HELL.

THIS is SO Cool!

Pilfered from slashdot: Bunny writes "The City of Dayton, Ohio announced a plan to make all of downtown a WiFi hotspot - and as of last week, the network is live. This makes Dayton the first Ohio city to offer free WiFi access. Approximately one square mile of downtown is now live, including Fifth Third Field, the Oregon District, Webster Station and RiverScape. The WiFi project is a public/private partnership not funded by taxpayers, and comes at no charge to the end user." (According to the linked story at WHIO-TV, the city is actually paying about $5,000 per year, with advertisers picking up the rest of the tab.)

The Benefits of Walking

So I was on my daily walk - it's an exercise thing - and I was most of the way home, attempting to beat the rain clouds, when I passed by a man mowing his lawn. I didn't really pay a lot of attention to him, earbuds with ipod blaring a radio show into my ears and all. I happened to notice him as he looked at me, stopped what he was doing and just started, mower still running in his hands. He then let go of the handle (which turned the mower off) and signaled that I should pull out the earbud, which I did. "Hi!" he says. "I thought it was going to be nice today!" "Yeah..." I replied. "Dunno what happened. I was going to mow my lawn today too..." I fibbed slightly (I NEED to mow my lawn and I had considered it breifly but never fully committed). "Oh! You need some help with that?" He asks. How sweet, I thought, and smiled brightly "No thanks, I'm going to wait for a dry sunny day." I reached for the earbud and started to walk away and he began to mow again. As I made my way around the cul-du-sac he signals to me again, at which I repeat the process of removing my ear bud and pausing my show. "My name is EJ by the way, what's yours?" "I'm Kim. Nice to meet you EJ." I said. "Let me know if you need any help with that lawn. I'm right here." I chuckled and replied "Thank you!" and continued on my walk.