A strange day

When I got home from running errands this morning, there were two messages on my answering machine. One was routine; the other was odd.

I thought I could hear a loud rushing noise, and a car's electronic warning chime of the kind you hear when a door is open and the key's in the ignition or seatbelts aren't fastened. The chime was both unusual and familiar to me. Only one brand of car I've ever driven has it. I played the "message" back several times, and was fairly certain of what I heard.

So I checked caller ID and found the call came from a friend's number. He actually has one of those unusual cars. I dialed his number, and got his wife. She had just bounced said car off a freeway center divider when the brakes went away. After she got it stopped, she tried to call 911 but got my number from the phone's memory instead.

What I heard was the sound of traffic rushing past and the door open/key in ignition warning. M. was a bit disoriented, and it took her a moment to realize she hadn't gotten the emergency number.

Fortunately, by the time I called back she was off the freeway, had been checked out and was okay -- if understandably shaken -- and the car had been hauled off to a shop. Apparently it will survive as well.

I had just had my own narrow escape on the freeway perhaps half an hour before, caused by a truck ahead of me overloaded with miscellaneous dump-bound items.

PARENTHETICAL THOUGHT: Since some people consider it racist to mention that the occupants of said truck did not appear to be legal residents of this country, I won't say anything about that....

A chunk of wood the size of a pallet flew off the top of the truck, aimed directly at the windshield of the car I was driving. It was one of those odd, slow-motion moments; I had enough time to glance in the mirror and yank the wheel to the left as the big slab seemed to float in the air in front of me. It hit the ground and the car behind me smacked into it, fortunately without causing the sort of damage it would have done to my ride.

Of course this put me in the carpool lane, which would have subjected me to a hefty fine had a cop seen me. Cops here tend not to stop *ll*g*l *l**n drivers as a rule, no matter what they do.

No harm, no foul. Better than what poor M. went through, for sure.

When I got home, I found that the hot weather had brought out a squadron of fleas. I am mildly allergic to fleas. Until now, there haven't been any fleas in this area for as long as I've lived here.

So now I'm hot, somewhat angry, lonely and depressed. And I itch.