I have a two-in-one traffic asshole for you today.

On Tuesday of last week, I was coming home and I noticed that my usual exit to get home there was quite the backup. Turns out there was a car parked diagonally across the right-hand lane of the two-lane exit.

Normally I might feel bad for the guy whose car this was, since a broken down car is not fun. But then I thought, “You know, a nice person might have rolled the car around the corner into the emergency lane so nobody would be blocked.” That, coupled with the fact that the exit was backed up for like a mile, made me much less sympathetic.

Okay, so that was Tuesday. I took a picture in case nothing better (or more frustrating) came along. But something did.

Friday as I was coming home I noticed that my exit was backed up again! What could it be this time?

Oh, look, there’s a bus blocking the left lane. Not even a full bus, either - one of those retard busses that only show up if you schedule them. ARGH! I ended up having to pass my exit, get off at the next one, and then come back on side streets. The backup was so far back I couldn’t even get in line.

Clogging up my exit has become quite the epidemic here. It’s a good thing I’m not armed.

Found some stuff I want…

Remote controlled Acura RSX from Radio Shack. Just like what I drive, except mine’s black and doesn’t look like a rice racer.

Light gun games, many of which aren’t available in the US. The Police 24/7 one looks especially cool, but isn’t over here yet. I’m hoping it’ll show up soon.

This was the first truly decent weekend I’ve had in a while. I’m not ridiculously tired this morning and I don’t feel like I wasted my time. What made it better? In no particular (or chronological) order…

We quit Atkins. After a week and a half and eleven pounds lost, we quit. I’ve been known to say, “If someone said I could never have chocolate again, I’d be fine. But if someone said I couldn’t have bread, I’d want to kill myself.” I think I proved that I was right - it was the lack of bread that made me hate everything and everyone. Now that I’ve had a bun on a burger, I’m doing much better.

I’ve decided to get a new computer. I’m going to get a pretty decent deal on a P4 2.66GHz machine through one of the myriad employee purchase programs that we’ve got set up at work, and it’s about time. I’m tired of fighting my computer to go, and the boot up time is ridiculous.

I got time to work on my Halloween costume. I’m going to be a Grammaton Cleric from the movie Equilibrium (which looks a lot like Neo from The Matrix, but is much cooler). I’ve got it about halfway done, and I’m actually enjoying the sewing of it quite a bit. There’s something about making something tangible (as opposed to, say, computer code, which is vastly intangible) and having something to show for your work that is extremely rewarding to me.

I played a load of Time Crisis 2. I really dig the light gun shooting thing, and this is a damn fun game. Hell yeah.

I bought a few movies at Costco. I got the 1963 edition of The Italian Job for $12.99. I also got a two-pack of movies for $20: Payback and Face/Off. And the two-pack has a $10 off coupon for the Indiana Jones Trilogy coming out on the 21st. So, basically, I got two movies for $5 each. Not bad.

That’s about it. It doesn’t sound like a lot got accomplished, but the relaxing part of the weekend was nice. I’m hoping to continue that into this week, finishing up my costume (which I can see will potentially become very frustrating as I near the end) and watching some of my new movies.

I figured out what was giving me the shits so bad earlier this week. Maltitol.

See, when the candy company makes sugar-free candy, they have to put something in instead, right? Sometimes it’s aspartame, sometimes it’s Splenda, sometimes it’s sugar alcohol, and sometimes it’s maltitol.

Turns out, maltitol has a laxative effect. Which is putting it mildly since, for me, it has more of a Montezuma’s Revenge bent. I ate a candy bar with maltitol in it at the hockey game last night (which was AWESOME, by the way) and about 20 minutes later I was making a break for the bathroom. I almost didn’t make it home in the car, either. Terrible, terrible, terrible.

So now I have to figure out what kinds of sugar-free treats I can eat that don’t have maltitol in them. I think I found some jelly beans, but I’ll have to check the package again to be sure.

I woke up this morning at 2:00a and couldn’t go back to sleep, so after laying in bed for two hours staring at the ceiling I decided to get up.

I sat in the living room, reading various periodicals that have been piling up for months, finally getting to the Hollywood gossip folks crave. My tiny cat helped me read by burying her face in my neck under my chin and slobbering while she kneaded (no claws = safe). She does that every once in a while and I’m not sure why, but it’s damn funny.

Jenn got up at her usual 6:00a and came out to tell me it was time to get ready for work. I hopped in the shower, cranked up the heat, and stood there, unmoving, for probably 20 minutes. There’s something about a hot shower when you’re sick.

Eventually I got my clothes on, grabbed my bag, and headed out the door. On the way to work I stopped at the store to get some DayQuil, decongestants, and Pepto-Bismol. It was a hard drive because I was tired, but I took a 15 minute snooze in the store’s parking lot and felt at least a little better.

And now I’m at work, working on the product demo project that I’ve been assigned to. I took some time yesterday and this morning to do a bit of an overhaul on it because I was developing quickly and not providing a very good back-end design. I’ve now entirely separated the business logic from the UI so maybe sometime they’ll be able to reuse my UI in a more robust demo.

My throat is dry, my sinuses are clogged, I’m tired and achy. Yeah, I’m sick. It really sucks, too, because I was supposed to get my allergy shot today but you can’t go in when you’re sick, so maybe Friday.

I have a 3:00p - 4:00p meeting today… I think I’m going home right after that.