Tag: strange

Account of the bank

At lunch I stopped by the bank to pick up some rolls of quarters for laundry. (The next time we move, a washer/dryer hookup will be part of our criteria.) For some reason, the teller was acting really nervous. When I asked to withdraw two rolls of quarters, she stammered that I should swipe my card while she went to get them.

This in turn made me nervous. I watched her talking to one of the other tellers, wondering what was going on. Did I have a doppelganger on the FBI most wanted list? Was I acting suspiciously without knowing it? Was I just really jittery from all the coffee I drank this morning? Is there some unwritten rule about how many rolls of coins one may reasonably withdraw at a time? Was I going to spend 20 minutes talking to the security guards before they were satisfied that all I wanted to do was withdraw some cash from my own account?

She came back with the quarters, I evidently managed to mistype my PIN, but I got it right on the second try, and the transaction went fine (except for her pronouncing my name wrong)—though I decided to keep my hands in plain sight, just in case. All told, it was an odd experience.

Current Mood: 😕confused

They really do come in threes

Saturday night: Driving home from a day with parents & grandparents. Two blocks from home, we made a left turn, and someone coming sideways ran the red light. They slowed down, we sped up, and disaster was averted.

This morning: After talking, for whatever reason, about car crashes and why you shouldn’t stop on the side of a bridge if you can help it (the chance of being hit and knocked over the edge, which happened to the younger brother of someone I knew in high school) during the carpool section of the morning commute, I watched an SUV plow into the center divider, hitting its right front wheel and, I’m fairly certain, knocking that wheel off.

This evening: Driving home from work, the right front tire went flat while we drove over a bridge.

Overall damage: I need to buy a new tire, and my shoes are scuffed up. But the level of coincidence is disturbing.

Current Mood: 😉weird

Strange Sights of the Weekend

Driving along the toll road and spotting an earth dam that I suspect is the end of a trail I used to hike as a kid.

Sitting in a sandwich shop, watching the rain outside, and seeing a man walk down the street in jeans, denim jacket, a cowboy hat… and sunglasses.

Pulling onto the freeway just in time to see an SUV heading the wrong way, apparently attempting a U-turn despite the presence of a concrete divider. It was almost completely turned around when it hit, and I could swear the front right wheel actually fell off when it struck the barrier. The driver looked okay, and other people were stopping, so I continued on to work. I figured I hadn’t seen enough—like how the truck ended up going the wrong way—to be a useful witness.

Current Mood: 😉weird

From the department of… huh?

Last night I dreamed that John Ashcroft was following me around the cereal aisle in the grocery store. After a bit he introduced himself: “Hi, I’m John Ashcroft. We met briefly in a shopping mall in Washington, DC ten years ago.” And since this was a dream, I started remembering the previous meeting. Which was essentially the same as the other one. Just about the point that I started to say “Oh, yeah, I remember now!” he was gone.

Current Mood: 😕confused

Irony, Luck, and Coincidence

Irony: Walking through Trader Joe’s and hearing “It never rains in California” on a day that really soaked.

Luck: The rain and clouds cleared up in time for a great view of the lunar eclipse (when we weren’t in a store or eating dinner). Post-eclipse, it started up again.

Coincidence: Watching Lost for the first time (fully aware that Merry Brandybuck and Lt. Matheson/Gavin Park are both on the show), and at the first commercial break, Buffy’s mom pops onto the screen to talk about painkillers. Tons of genre connections surrounding an apparentely non-genre show.

Notice!

I don’t understand the management at our apartment complex. They give us 3 days’ notice that they’ll be trimming the trees on a weekday, and they decide to power-wash our front door on a Sunday afternoon with no notice at all.

Current Mood: 😕confused

Arachnid Intelligence(?)

Every morning last week, there was a spider web attached to the car. An active one, with a spider in the center, waiting for flies, moths, and possibly small rodents. It would anchor one side to the carport post, and the other side to the driver’s side rear door. This resulted in me walking around through another carport, tossing my stuff in the back from the front seat, then gleefully ripping the web apart as I drove out of the space.

This happened three or four mornings in a row.

You’d think the spider would tumble to the fact that “Hey, this giant metal thing moves every day! Maybe I should attach my web to something else!”

Eventually it did. On Friday, it stayed outside and used the post and the roof instead, and by Saturday it had gone somewhere else. But it seems to be a common failing in spiders: we went by my parents’ house one night last week and there was another one, stretched from the olive tree to the minivan.