Thu 27 Apr 2006
So I’m driving to work this morning, bopping around in my car listening to 80s rock at full blast, eating a banana. And then the thought arbitrarily entered my brain that I should lick or eat the banana suggestively when some of these guys who are driving around me look into my car at me. After I had that mental image in my head (which made me laugh), I so wanted to do it! My brain was trying to talk me into it with, “It’s a bigger deal to me than to anyone who sees. They’d just laugh and tell their friends about it. It’s not like I know any of these people. I’ll probably never see them again.” It’s a good thing I don’t get intoxicated before my morning drives, or I may have.
But I’m a good, respectable little girl. Who’s just a little delirious from lack of sleep.
I didn’t finish the Raytheon roughs until midnight, and Sandy was still working next to me on her own laptop. This girl works till about 7p, and then goes to some group meetings at work, and then comes home at 8p, gets on her laptop, and continues working remotely while IMing and telephoning with her project teammates. She says she normally goes to bed about 1a. Anyway, we chatted for a little bit, I showed her some random photos that were taken since I’d last seen her in December (which I wrote about here and here). Then I left at about 1a. After the parking garage gouged me $65 for parking (it was automated, there was no one to argue with, and the $10/hour rate was not posted ANYWHERE, I checked), I drove toward what I thought was the 710 fwy entrance. Turned out it’s changed somewhat in the last 2 years or the sign’s fallen off on the street, cuz I ended up crossing bridges and going to the ports. I was following these big tanker trucks at 1:15 a.m., getting really nervous, cuz there’s nowhere to turn around, and I’m over water. Finally, I managed to get off onto a side bridge and went back up on a street that had a name I remembered passing while going down the 710 South to her house. And I was right. There was an entrance to the 710 North on that street. So happily, I got on… and got detoured off on the very next exit, Pacific Coast Highway. Apparently the freeway was doing some construction or something, and everyone on the freeway (there were amazingly quite a few of us at 1:30 in the morning) got herded off onto PCH. Soon, the “freeway detour” signs disappeared. I found myself driving God knows where passing factories, run-down storefronts, questionable staggering men, and strip clubs. Lots of strip clubs, offering full nudity on their Girls!Girls!Girls! as proudly emblazoned on their neon signs. I finally called Sandy and wailed. She had just come out of the shower so she was still up, and she at first didn’t recognize the streets I was on and told me to pull into a gas station to ask for directions. I refused at that hour at that time of night. Eventually I got to an intersection she was familiar with and she guided me to a different freeway entrance and saved me. I didn’t get home until past 2 a.m..
I am so wired.
what, you getting lost? no way!
😉
Thank you for all your mapquesting and remote navigation for me from the other side of the state when I’ve called you wailing about being lost, too.
[…] What is it with me and Diana trying to get anywhere when I drive?! Altho, getting lost with a nav is slightly more comforting than getting lost without one, as with the time I was lost in Long Beach in the middle of the night about to drive into the water. […]