Random Babbling Thread 120

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Merry Christmas to all as well

 

Merry Christmas!

 

5 hours, 45 minutes left in 2022 for me.

 

Ditto, Hope to see you here at midnight!

 

Happy New Year Everyone. Lamest one ever! It's so fucking foggy here that I can't see anything with all the explosions I hear

 

Hope everyone had a happy Hangover Day yesterday.

 

... Is it a new year already? Didn´t feel like it. Happy New Year to everyone, too!

 

Some other drivers have been doing something very annoying and illegal lately.
four times in the two weeks I've been pulling up to the white line in my low riding car trying to make a right turn. Then there is a large vehicle, either a van, minivan, or SUV in the lane next to me.
I can't see through them to see what's coming, so I creep up a bit past the white line so I can make my turn. Yet they see me do so and so creep up just as much, blocking my sight.
Sometimes it's on the road, sometimes it's exiting a parking lot where there are left and right turn lanes.

WHY?
Are they just being jerks?

 

I got gas for my mom's lawnmower since she has a bad knee and can't mow the lawn anymore.
Back when I was 12, I took a 5 gallon gas can and paid $5 to fill it.
Today, I spent $10 to fill a 2.5 gallon can at the same gas station.
(That 5 gallon can rusted out and fell apart around 1999, and was replaced with a 2.5 gallon can because the hardware store across the street from the gas station was sold out of 5 gallon cans. )

 

Your driver comment. Yeah, the drivers are just being jerks more and more often. I think it's the times, everybody is borderline enraged and looking for somebody to take it out on. I had a long drive a while back across the metro, I was in the right lane, with my left-turn signal on the entire time because I wanted to get LEFT. But every time I tried to shift into that line another car came barreling down that line at a speed that made me look like I wasn't moving and forced me back into the right lane again. When I finally reached my destination and pulled off the freeway a freaking highway patrol pulled me over "You were speeding and weaving." WTH? What about all those people who flew past me like I wasn't moving? They weren't speeding but I was? "Weaving" - did you not see my constantly running left turn signal showing I wanted to get into the left lane and my being forced out again and again? If I hadn't been weaving to dodge those idiots there would have been casualties. And the post on prices. Yes I remember when I could take $20 and fill my tank, have McDonalds, and have a bit of change left over. Now I'd have to chose which is more important if that's all I had. The cost of living is about 4x what it was 40 years ago, and incomes have only increased around 3x - everybody is edgy.

 

Yup, I'm living in a 2 bedroom apartment for a little over $1,300 a month. Exact same one was $440 in the 90's

 

I miss the $1.99 "combo meals" at McDonald's they had at the end of the '90s. Some burger or sandwich, small fries, and a small drink for $2. I only remember the quarter pounder and filet o' fish, but I know there were other choices. Those ended around 2001 and were later replaced with the Dollar Menu where it cost $3 to get essentially the same thing.

As for the cop, sounds like my experience with Authority when I was in school. Ignore the guys flagrantly breaking the rules for the one guy trying to be decent.
On the subject of not being able to change lanes, I had that problem back in 2007 with I-355/I-290/Illinois 53. Around Addison I-355 merges with I-290, which becomes IL-53 in Schaumburg.
So I was working near North Avenue. I-355 becomes a toll road south of Army Trail Road, but if I got on at Army Trail I could save myself from the 50¢ toll. As the I-PASS system was just being rolled out and I hadn't had a need until I got that job, I didn't have one until a couple months into the job once I was out of the 3-month probation period and knew I'd be keeping it. So if I didn't have a couple of quarters handy I'd get on at Army Trail.
The problem with this was that was that once I merged onto I-355, I had to immediately change lanes or be forced to exit at the next Exit at Lake Street. Then I had to change lanes again or be forced onto I-290 at the merger. Then I had to change lanes again or be forced to exit at what was back then the 190 Elgin-O'hare expressway but is now 390 (and they fixed some of this forced lane change by adding another lane), and I had to change lanes one more time if I wanted to get into the express lane to avoid the rush hour backup at the "exit" to I-90.
So I had to change lanes four times, two of them plus the initial merge over a 2 mile stretch which is 2 minutes at the 60MPH speed limit, and the others about a mile apart.
Quite often I got run off the road because nobody would let me merge left.

Since then there was a major reconstruction project, 190 became just for around O'hare and the Elgin-O'hare Expressway got renamed 390 and made a tollway. They also added a lane between somewhere south of North Avenue (I don't remember the road past North Avenue well enough to be sure as I rarely went that far south. I live in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago which is south of North Avenue. North Avenue used to be the northern border of Chicago, but the city expanded a bit since the 19th century) and 390 so you are no longer forced to merge 4 times, but it is only 3 times with several miles between the first two and the last. That was done back around 2016.

My point is that jerks refusing to let you merge is nothing new.

 

McD's, yes exactly; and now that $2 meal is around $10 - the dollar menu has been stripped down to items from the kids meals. Yeah we had some of those freeway problems too. I remember once coming home from college when I NEEDED to shift right or be forced through a much longer and slower route. The highway evenly split with one lane going one way, the other going the other way, no split lane in the middle. This guy pulled up behind me, practically on my bumper, flashing his brights at me - yes I was theoretically in the fast lane but with the split coming up it was not relevant. Then he pulled into the lane to my right. After that this guy decided to parallel me exactly so I couldn't shift lanes. I speeded up, he did, I slowed down, he did. Deliberately blocking me. I watched the point where I was going to be forced to go the longer route coming up, looked behind me to make sure nobody was right behind me now, or in the other lane, almost slammed my brakes, and before he could slow I was in his lane, now behind him. Where I could pull the same tailgating and light flashing BS he'd pulled on me. He was not happy, doing everything I'd done to shake him with the same results except for the time when he slammed his breaks, and I did the same - which was very stupid with me on is bumper. And I got to chase him for longer than he'd done me. I think that was the only time I got the better of one of those idiots. That other one though, it was actually maybe 6 months ago and it still angers me. I'm guessing at some point the Highway Patrol was required to give a business card with their name and phone number and so on on it to everyone they pulled over. She gave me one. I deliberated for months over calling her and bitching her out. In the end I figured she'd never remember me so it was pointless - then tossed out the card as it was a useless filler for my already packed wallet.

 

Heh, Starting to sound like an "I miss the 90's thread". I remember Burger King had the Whopper Jr, Whopper and double Whopper meals for $1.99, $2.99 and $3.99. No mayo or ketchup please, to avoid the bathroom blitz 15 minutes later

 

Yeah that. They didn't seem to understand how to keep that stuff sanitary at all. That and their employees were often idiots. One store I used to go to used to microwave food before serving it. They didn't even bother to pull the pickle, lettuce and tomato off first - those veggies do not microwave well and you can easily tell when they have been - it utterly ruins the taste of the sandwich making it taste like you pulled it out of the garbage and ate it. Another could never remember to actually put cheese on a cheeseburger. I mean imagine paying a $1 for a 3 cent slice of cheese and actually wanting it on your sandwich? Who'da thunk? I would stop in every several months to see if they finally trained the idiots to put cheese on stuff that was supposed to, and they never did over the several years I stopped there. I could drive another half-mile and stop at Wendy's for a much better burger, fresh grilled, and everything you asked for on the sandwich every time, so I did - at least most of the time. And yes Sorvo, rents skyrocketed, especially after Covid when everyone who once shared a larger apartment moving into a 1-bedroom for safety.

 

Back in the 90s, my uncle was considered fairly rich. He drove a fancy car, could easily afford to buy a nice apartment in the city, raised two kids, and had plenty of money to spare for luxury vacations with the family twice a year (which I sometimes tagged along with).

I currently have one of the best-paid jobs in the country in my field and, accounting for inflation over the last, say, 25 years, I easily make more money than he did back then. My SO makes almost as much too, so let's say we're almost twice as well off as he was back in the 90s. By contrast, it took us two years to pay off our 4-year-old-at-the-time car, we had to buy a house almost an hour's drive from the city by taking out a mortgage and a second loan, and we have to do our best to find cheap vacation options if we also want to eat anything fancy while we're there and not worry about paying off our debts for the month.

I mean, we're not struggling by any stretch of the imagination here, but the fact that we did everything right, we both hold very good, stable jobs, we have no kids (if you don't count our cats and dogs), we're not frivolous with our spending, and yet we still can't afford a carefree standard of living is just sad. I have no idea how people in lower brackets manage to survive without going mental.

 

I hear you, a well-off couple has to both work at good-paying jobs, and work hard with overtime usually, to feel like they are half as well-off as people were 40 years ago, if they are lucky.