Daily Humor from Boise

Traffic may be crazy in China, but sometimes Nampa is equally ridiculous.

Tonight I was on my way to play a Boise Baroque concert, driving down the road and eating a chicken sandwich while trying to shift and to stay more or less in my lane. Yes, I occasionally fall into the large percentage of the population whose behavior may only be scornfully dismissed with a shake of the head and the phrase "some people's children..."

Anyway, I needed to turn left (east) at 3rd street, which, you may have guessed, comes immediately after 2nd street. It just so happens that 2nd street only goes one way: west. But as the car in front of me casually maneuvered into the nonexistent left turn lane, I decided that the owner of the California plates had not yet realized this very important fact. When the light turned green I had one of those helpless, show-motion moments, watching the driver attempt to turn into oncoming traffic and realizing mid-course that there was no place to go. Thankfully he made it all the way to 3rd street without submitting any insurance claims, but perhaps Idaho is not a safe place for fire refugees after all (Kristin was talking about listing her house on Craigslist under San Diego earlier today).

My parents have become very techie while living in China. Not only do they maintain a blog, utilize various tricks for accessing government-restricted web sites, and talk to people at home on Skype -- they also communicate with taxi drivers by getting people to send them text messages with the appropriate addresses and directions written in Chinese characters. I'm so proud. :)

Speaking of internet craziness, I heard a song on the radio recently that seriously caused me to start laughing out loud in my car. The chorus starts out: "I'm so much cooler online". It's about a guy describing his fictitious online profile and its effect on his imagined social and relationship status. This could be the Case Western Reserve University fight song, I'm so not even kidding.