Road Rage

Hi, my name is Valerie and I have road rage.

The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, right?

I was driving to Sapulpa to ref 3 basketball games that I couldn't get out of tonight (Mitch wouldn't ref them for me because he's "sick". What a faker.) Most of the drive is on Highway 51, which is one lane in each direction. I got behind a man in a truck who was going about 5 miles under the speed limit. Naturally, as we reached a passing zone, I floated a few feet left to see if I could pass the truck. NORMALLY, this is the point in the story where the man driving the truck should move to the right to make passing easier and safer.

This is NOT the point where the d-bag should speed up/ride the center line to avoid letting you pass him because in some way he relates being passed on the highway with his own failure in life. Or something like that.

I was pissed off enough already, but I moved back behind him, thinking that since he had sped up, it wouldn't matter that I was behind him.

Until he slowed down to 60 again. And we repeated the passing dance again. And he blocked me and then slowed down again.

Sometimes, the only answer is remaining calm and being a responsible adult.

And sometimes, the only answer is flipping someone the bird.

Somebody drank their Hateorade

So everyone knows about trolls, internet stalkers who exist to write hate about people. But did you know that there's a person whose blog is nothing but hate?

Meet Chicken Liver, a woman who spends her time reading others' blog posts so she can then write a commentary and post a link for her hate-filled losers followers. It's amazing!

See, I always thought if you didn't like someone's blog or thought it was stupid, that you would JUST STOP READING. Seriously, nobody gives a crap that you think The Pioneer Woman's food isn't healthy enough or that Dooce doesn't love her children enough (seriously? like the Internet allows those judgments?).

And to show you that I don't really care, I'm not going to continue visiting your site and writing about it. I'm just going to never read it again.

See how easy that was?

A sad day for OSU fans

Everytime OSU plays a home football game, I'm there. I haven't missed a game all year. I sit very close to the opposite team's sideline, which is great for being really close to the on-field action. Unfortunately, it also gives fans the idea that they're close enough to heckle the players and the officials.

No one is worse about this than "Facemask Guy." This bearded wonder sits behind my family and can't seem to go ONE PLAY without yelling that the officials have missed facemask/holding/late hit/offsides/any penalty that could make up for the fact that we were not hugely successful that play. It's bad enough that he thinks we're getting screwed by the refs every single play, but this week he did something even worse: he brought a friend.

Those two worked in tandem, yelling increasingly inane and idiotic things until they hit the point when their true ignorence was revealed. After a particularly sickening and not illegal hit on our quarterback which left two players injured on the field, the man behind me yelled a racial slur at an opposing player.

I turned immediately, shocking and saddened that someone who loved the same university as I do could have that kind of hate for another person. Although I was shocked into silence, I'm so proud that I married a man who was enraged enough to turn around and tell that man how classless and ignorent he was.

As for his friend Facemask Guy, I'm leaving a highlighted copy of Football for Dummies in his seat next game. Even though there's always a few idiots in our ranks, I'm still proud to be a Cowboy fan!


P.S. Today is the start of another 30-day blog challenge, so come back daily for fresh content!

Your mission, should you choose to create it

I hate mission statements on resumes, because really, the whole objective is to get a job. Why even put some buzzword-y, jargony mess on your resume? Although, I have to say that I love this mission statement that was shared with me by a friend:

To effectively create the implementation of any conceivable idea that contributes positively towards benefiting the organization where I am called to serve, the community where I live and then the nation and may be the entire human race.

Changing course of the human race, one conceivable idea at a time...

Groan.

I was walking through campus yesterday when I came upon a large sign emphasizing the dangers of cigarettes. It was one of the ones where they show all the harmful things that are in cigarettes, like arsenic, tar, ammonia, etc. Something like this, except the one on campus was 10 feet long and had double the amount of items identified:
And just as I walked by, I heard a Physical Plant worker say to his buddy:

"That's crap. If all that stuff was really in cigarettes, they wouldn't be able to sell them."

Sigh.

Still not your wife: the saga continues

I got another email from my our illustrious Congressional liason. (See Part 1 and Part 2 if you need background.)

Apparently, I need to kick in some money for gift certificates for 'our' son's soccer coach.

I think the time has come to start emailing this guy back.

Any suggestions?

Higher Liar, Pants on Fire!

Yesterday, I got a phone message from Barbara Allen, the new O'Colly adviser. She said something along the lines of "I've got a situation here that I wanted to talk to you about."

Of course, I was interested immediately...and a little bit obsessed and worried. Neurotic much? What could it be? I gave them my newsroom key back, didn't I? I never fired someone that could now claim sexual harassment, did I?

As it turns out, I wrote a story many months ago for my public affairs reporting class. And this article was published on the front page of the O'Colly. Go me!

In this article (which is supremely bad-ass, let me tell you what), I write about MB, an OSU student who was charged with felony marihuana possession after OSU police found 1/5 of an ounce in his dorm room. Felony because he was on a college campus, and Oklahoma law allows police to charge felony possession if the person is within 1000 feet of a school or park.

I used the public arrest record to find his name, and then found MB on facebook. I figured he would be perfect to talk to, since he was a member of the NORML facebook group and all. We facebook messaged a few times before I called him for an interview.

Flash forward to the present. Seems MB's mom found the article and asked him about it. He claimed he never knew the article would be printed in the O'Colly and that I tricked him. So his mommy called the O'Colly to have them correct this error. She even forwarded our facebook messages that showed I never mentioned the O'Colly when I contacted him.

Too bad I ALSO have those messages. Here are a few key messages that dear ole MB forgot to show Mommy:

MB: Dec. 6, 6:00pm "hey, hope that info helped ya out. You think you could email me the final report or somethin, I'm just curious to see what ya find out about this. Thanks"
Me: Dec. 10, 12:00 pm "Yeah, the story is going to run on Wednesday in the paper, hopefully. If not, I can send you a final result."
MB: Dec. 16, 12:22 am "hey, i never got a chance to get the paper on wed. ive been checking the website and it doesn't seem like it has been uploaded yet. if it's not going to get on there can you send it to me. mb@okstate.edu, thanks"

Me: Dec. 16, 1:29 am "sure, i'll send it to you now. the version in the paper was cut down a little bit, so i'll send the full story. thanks again for all your help!"


Umm, maybe this would be a good time to 'fess up to Mommy? Just claim you were too high to remember giving the interview. Heck, that might even be the truth.

I'm STILL not your wife...

Remember our illustrious Congressional representative? The one who keeps emailing me as if I'm his wife, despite my numerous emails that assure him I am not?

Today I learned his son is playing summer league basketball.

And because the message he sent me was a forwarded message that the coach had sent to ALL the parents, it showed the wife's email address....which is exactly like mine, except it has 08 on the end.

So we now know:
1. Although he knows enough about the United States Geological Survey to serve as a Congressional Liason, he can't figure out how to add two digits to his wife's name to make the correct email address.
2. He forwards things to his wife despite the fact that it was already sent to her.
3. His son must be pretty sporty. That must go for all Wests. :)

I am not your wife!

Today when I popped open my email, I saw a really strange message with the subject line, "FYI Mike Connor confirmed." The email was about Michael Connor being confirmed by the Senate as Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Umm, whaaa? It was then that I realized that the email was not from my father (J. Tim West), but from Timothy J. West, my longtime email buddy who refuses to quit sending me emails intended for his wife, who shares my name.

Over the last 18 months, Timothy has sent me lots of messages, including important ones about how he forgot his cell phone and this email was the only way to communicate to his wife how they would be meeting up later that afternoon. He's also sent me information about his son's soccer schedule (Go NWAL-Arlington!).

So I did what any normal person would do. I sent him a very polite email explaining that I wasn't his wife (which he really should know) and that he probably wanted to fix this error so that his wife could receive these messages.

And I kept getting the emails. So I kept writing back.

And I kept getting emails.

Eventually, I just gave up on him. I figured that he obviously was technologically/intellectually challenged because he never wrote me back to acknowledge his error and he KEEPS WRITING ME.

The scariest thing about this post? I googled the guy and he's the freaking Congressional Liason for the United States Geological Survey.

The man who can't figure out that he isn't emailing his wife is responsible for being the voice of a major governmental organization to Congress.

*Face palm*

P.S.Good news: the motorcycle riding asshole waited until 6:45 this morning to jet out of the neighborhood at warp speed 4 on his ridiculously loud motorcycle. I remained calm, but I really wanted to go grab a huge stick and throw it into the spokes of his front tire. (Does it still count as road rage if you aren't technically driving? Hmm...)