Here's a driving story, short I hope I can keep it that way!

Exiting our bus yard on NE Columbia Blvd. is often a real challenge because it is a 3 lane road. One lane in each direction and a two way left turn lane. Before coming to the yard in either direction are yellow diamond signs showing a school bus and an arrow, to warn other drivers that school buses could be in the area, turning onto and off of the roadway in the next couple of hundred feet. The posted speed there is 40 however most of the traffic goes between 35 and 55 mph.

When we pull the school bus out of the driveway, we need to encroach into the two way left turn lane for a few moments to safely complete the turn onto Columbia. We do a hook turn there and are soon back into our West bound traffic lane. Friday while leaving the yard, I was looking both East and West alternately waiting for a break in the traffic so that I could pull out onto the roadway in to the West, that's a right turn. I am looking to the West to make sure there is no one in the middle lane since I need that space to complete my turn. Everything is clear to the left, clear to the right and I get my bus moving. I'm in the center lane with the bus heading into the West bound traffic lane and suddenly a red car is speeding towards me in the center lane! Where did this car come from? Oh, I get it! It was in the East bound traffic lane when the driver decided she needed to pass the slower traffic! That's what happened. She had to quickly veer back into her traffic lane when confronted by the bus! I reacted quickly too, by carefully applying my brakes and was able to slow down from 10 mph to stopped soon enough for her to get back into her lane without colliding with me. As I looked in my mirror upon proceeding in a West bound direction, I saw the famous American Bird appearing out of her drivers window! I had no response to that but to shake my head and continue on my journey.

These kind of scenes happen multiple times per day to each and every professional driver on the road. Sometimes their are tradgic results, but most times nothing bad happens. If more non professional drivers could witness these types of near misses. Well, I just don't think that they would be capable of changing their patterns of behavior enough to make a difference. 30 thousand pounds at any speed is still like driving your car into a brick wall! Once again, here is that picture reminder of what it means to collide with a bus. This avoidable accident happened because the driver thought he could cross traffic in front of the bus which was traveling at about 28 mph. Unfortunately the car driver miscalculated and was struck by the bus and the first responders had to cut the roof off the car to remove him and his passenger.

Here is a good story on Alternet with Eliot Spitzer, remember him?

AIG Story!
Check out this story. And we thought Eliot Spitzer the former Governor of New York State just got caught with hookers. It seems that political blackmail is alive and well in the United States. At least we seem to be beyond political assassinations!

It's nine am and I have to finish up, but first...Buster

Buster's condition is deteriorating fast or so it seems. His eye sight is failing and along with his idiocratic vestebular disease he is really struggling. I am just taking it a moment at a time with him and think I may have to put him down, end his life since he is so struggling with just being here now. I am delaying my decision to put him down because it is so painful to think about life without Buster. He is such a loving dog, but I have to think of his quality of life, if he is in pain etc. The vestebular disease is completely horrible and he has compensated masterfully, but even with his compensation, he struggles so much. I've had to walk him on the leash just to keep him from leaning and then falling down to the side.

Last weekend I took him to Oaks Bottom and let him go swimming. Bad idea, even though he has been a good swimmer in the past, his balance issue came out big time in the water. As soon as the river bottom got deeper, he lost his balance in the water and rolled over like a log and began thrashing. If I hadn't run into the river, he would have drowned since he couldn't seem to right himself.

He has old blind dog disease and vestebular disease. I'd heard the band Old Blind Dogs but it didn't strike me as being about dogs, but that is what happens to dogs eventually and some people too. We grow old and the qualities that we have come to expect of our lives leave us. It is because of this aging that makes it tough for our living friends and families. At least Buster and Jerky have me to look after them. It is just tearing at my heart that Buster is going down faster as the moments pass......

Rebelliousness is a learned trait!

I was not always a rebel. I had to learn it from someplace, my survival mode. I couldn't accept what society wanted me to be from an early age. What was left was non conforming. Being rebellious is not so comfortable most of the time. I am constantly at war inside myself.

Just as with many of my peers I have been searching my soul for my own happiness. It certainly isn't something that happens from the outside. Happiness is an inside job. I have thrived on a positive outlook even in the most negative of circumstances. The negative side is really powerful and it is a struggle to keep away from it's false promises.

Being a rebel is not a negative experience as society has tried to tell me over and over. Society in the past had no way of integrating my rebellious nature into something that would benefit them I suspect.

Bail OUt Fiasco and the Golden parachutes!

Well, AIG wants more money and the big rip is that they are giving bonuses to the folks that dragged their dicks in the dirt and took the whole company down. They say they are contracts and I put out a comment on NPR about contracts. I said that let them go bankrupt just like like the airlines and auto makers and then abrogate those contracts just like the bankruptcy judges did to the unions.

But those big corporations, AIG and the banks have said we are to big to go belly up, all these things bad things would happen if they were to fail. Guess what, all the bad things have happened and now the tax payers are on the hook! I can't describe how angry I am about all the financial dealings of these companies. And it is not like we didn't know it was happening. The business model hasn't changed for at least 2 decades and we let these people continue to threaten us and rob us because we are afraid to let them fail, then shame on us.

I wasgoing to say something, besides gonite, but that is it.

post-raphaelite sisterhood has posed an interesting question that needs some further response from me.

According to some we are not in a depression nor are we going to go into one like the 1930's.

And of course, I have managed to get off the topic of why I go to work but it is linked on my ability to go to work. Already, the school district I work for indirectly is saying they have a budget shortfall even though their budget has increased and the money they get from the state has increased, apparently not enough to stave off a shortfall. Where is that going to leave my job? It is all interconnected, the reasons I go to work and what the economy is doing. So.....

Since I tend to be wordy in my ability to address questions with short answers I am continuing my thoughts here on why I go to work.

When I was growing up I never understood the relationship my father had with work and how it he traded his time for a salary. He was a salaried worker and not hourly like some of us.

In my imagination growing up when I finally understood something about earning money, my thoughts that came from my idealism were that my tax dollars would be used to supply me with housing, medicine etc. The things that in a civilized society the people should be getting. I believe that still. I believe that our tax dollars should be used to better our society, not benefit those who want to profit from making weapons to sell to our government and attack those who don't believe the way we do. Of course, my idealism is quite the opposite of reality because our tax dollars seem to be being used to further the future of the big businesses that have caused much of the current turmoils in our society while pursuing that illusive big buck!

It is a shame that our direction seems to be determined by the 1% of our society that controls 90% of the wealth. It is preposterous to think that we keep pouring money into failing enterprises because they are just to big to fail, that we have over time given big business to be referred to as people and allowed huge regulatory misconduct and tax loop holes and given additional tax breaks.

Why do you think so many people see opportunities in coming to The United States of America? It is called "The Land of Opportunity" but maybe we should be called "The Land of Opportunists" in order to out the unscrupulous, to bring them out and put them under the microscope of scrutiny.

Mad, your damn right I'm mad as Hell! These people have run our country into the ground and keep coming back to be bailed out. The people who work for others have to take the brunt of the impact of the receding economy in layoffs and all that goes along with that. It is past time to see just have far we have not come from the days of feudalism.