Today has not been the best day. It started when I got up – my normal practice is to weight myself and take my pulse and blood pressure right after waking. Today, my sphygmomanometer died. I pumped it up several times, and it displayed the falling pressure and the pulse indication, but it gave me an error each time, instead of the final results.
Driving to work, there’s a major intersection about 1/2 mile from the office, and the cross street is the major one, so I always have to wait for the light. This morning, just as I was braking to join the line of cars at the light, some idiot (I’m using an innocuous description to avoid the profanity that I used when this happened) zoomed past me and jinked into my lane to avoid having to wait behind a gravel truck. I had to brake so hard to avoid hitting him that everything loose in the car went flying. I’m just relieved that I hadn’t stopped to pick up coffee and burritos for the office this morning. When the light turned green, the idiot kept pace with the gravel truck, so that the light turned red before I was through the intersection. He remained ten miles per hour below the speed limit to the next light, calmly sailing through just after it had turned red, thus forcing me to wait for the next cycle.
Nothing much happened at work, apart from a BSOD at the end of the day, just as I was about to save a file I’d been working on.
Driving home, I noticed a heavy brake smell just after I got onto the highway. I didn’t think it was my car, because my on-ramp going home is just after the highway finishes a 7% downgrade that is several miles in length, but I have had some brake trouble recently, so I wasn’t certain. I got off at the next exit, and saw that a semi trailer several vehicles ahead of me had a smoking wheel, so that relieved me. However, just past the next intersection, the pickup in front of me got into the “right turn only” lane to go into the shopping center there. Then, he decided not to, but I had drawn almost even with him. Another flying interior braking event, and I’d avoided him. He got back into the traffic lane, then turned into the second entrance to the shopping center.
Later, and closer to home, I managed to avoid (without any trouble) driving behind a van with precariously-packed back section, and which also had back doors that were open and swinging. I did have a little trouble with a vehicle that decided to cut abruptly from behind it to in front of me, though.
No problems with dinner, but my bad knee has been acting up since then. Blargh.