The Burlingames

The government is blowing our money faster than it can be printed. First they bailed out the irresponsible businesses that should have been allowed to fail. The President just signed into law one of the most ridiculous wastes of money we’ve ever seen. I think the new term “porkulus” aptly describes the nature of that bill. Now there’s talk of throwing away even more money to bail out the people who can’t pay their mortgages. I don’t know about you, but it drives me nuts that our tax money (money we don’t even have, by the way) is being used to subsidize all of these things.

I decided to write our elected officials in an effort to sway their opinion and let my voice be heard. Here’s what I wrote:

My wife, Megan, and I are appalled at the irresponsible spending the federal government has decided to undertake. We were against the bank bailout, against the so-called “stimulus” plan, and we are against the proposed mortgage bailout.

If your business can’t stay afloat of its own accord, it should fail. That’s capitalism. If I can’t pay my mortgage, I shouldn’t own that house. That’s common sense.

Americans, on the whole, already believe too much in entitlement and not enough in personal responsibility. How is anyone going to learn from this disaster if there are no consequences? The last thing we need is to throw more good money after bad.

You can write our senator (that’s ‘senator’ singular thanks to Coleman/Franken), Amy Klobuchar via her website. Find your representative here.

I narrowly escaped yet another accident in Fridley this week. I was driving my work truck on a city street, passing a gas station on my right. A woman coming from the opposite direction signalled a left turn, wanting to turn into the gas station I was approaching. She appeared to be slowing down like she was going to wait to turn until I had gone by. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, she did not wait; she turned in front of me very late. I layed on the horn and slammed on the brakes, skidding on the pavement. She then realized her error and hit the gas harder to get out of my way. She just made it; I couldn’t have missed her by more than a foot or two.

However, the story doesn’t end there. In her haste to get out of my way, she ran straight into the front of a car coming out of the gas station because she was too busy looking at me and not where she was going. Oops.

You may have noticed a lull in posting lately. It is due, for the most part, thanks to all the people trying to get their gifts to people at the last minute. Work has been nutty; I’ve been working 10- and 12-hour days for the last week. That tends to get in the way of other activities. Today is the last day of insanity for me as I’ll be going back to a more normal schedule.

As a testament to how busy FedEx Express has been, consider this: Monday of last week was the most single-day volume ever for the company (11.4 million packages), beating the previous record of about 9.8 million. This week, especially Tuesday, was projected to be even more volume. We’ll see how it shakes out when the numbers come in.

I’ve been back at work since Wednesday of last week. My ankle was a bit sketchy last week, but has been improving by leaps and bounds this week. Praise God for good progress.

I was sitting at a light today in the right-turn lane behind another car, waiting for my turn to go. Suddenly, a motorcycle passed me (and the next car) on the right. There was no gap in the traffic, but he pulled out and turned right anyway, racing up the shoulder until he matched speeds with the cars next to him. He cut in front of one car, causing them to brake, and then cut into the next lane as well.

After he had gone, I looked to see how much space I had left between the curb and my truck. The side was only about 2 feet from the curb. I don’t know how he made it through without rubbing the curb and eating it. What a moron. Perhaps even more amazing is that the guy wasn’t some young punk on a crotchrocket, but an old, ZZ Top-looking guy on a medium-size cruiser.

It’s been awhile since my last bad driver post, and it’s not because people are suddenly better drivers; I’ve just been lazy in reporting.

We’ve all seen the guy that stops at a red light and then slowly creeps into the intersection, either trying to anticipate the light changing or thinking their movement will cause it to change. Well, the one I saw today must have given up on waiting for the light to change and just decided to go through the red. Moron.