What The ..???

is WRONG with people?

We have a new roundabout* at the end of our street which opened about 10 days ago. It is just about the smallest-diameter circle I've seen on a public road. Be that as it may, I've had to use it once or twice daily since it opened.

On eight of those occasions, I've been cut off or nearly run off the road while in the circle, by drivers entering at high speed - looking neither left nor right - and careening on to their destinations, leaving everyone else sliding all over the place, trying to avoid a collision. Twice, I've seen drivers come to a complete stop in the circle - a major no-no - to wave other drivers into the circle.

And this particular roundabout is only 1 1/2 lanes wide, yet has two lanes painted halfway around the circle, which then go back to single lanes, with arrows and dotted lines instructing those few who look, to change lanes inside the circle - another no-no, or so I thought - to exit.

Because of the tiny diameter, with the mandatory criss-crossing of the lanes, it's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen. And friends, I've driven in countries where "honk! honk!" means "stand still - I think I can miss you". (Athens, I'm looking at you!)

The traffic department told us it would reduce congestion. Well, it worked. It's reducing congestion by at least one driver - me, who will not use it again except in an emergency. I'll now have to drive three blocks out of my way to cross the road by my house.

It's bizarre. If I'm ever introduced to the genius who decided it needed to be smaller and more congested, I'll be hard pressed not to punch him in the nose.



* I hate roundabouts. Always have. So sue me.

Well, THAT Was Fun

Anchorage, along with most of south-central Alaska, is experiencing very high winds. Around 12:45, there was a wide-spread power outage as lines (apparently) blew down in several locations.


Doctors in the medical office building that I manage had a half-dozen people in surgery at the time. The generator kicked on as designed, and provided complete power to the entire sterile core. The rest of the building doesn't fare as well in an outage; the security (night-time) lights stay on, but nothing else.

Since my office is an interior space, it goes dark. I shut off the computer (while the UPS beeped its brains out to let me know the power was off*), grabbed my trusty Maglite and made sure everybody was okay, while my cellphone rang nonstop, with tenants wanting info ... which I didn't have.

It took me about 30 minutes to get through to the power company, which had a) no idea what the cause was but said to "assume it's wind damage somewhere", and b) therefore didn't know when the repairs would be made.

Naturally, the lights came on while I was calling the O.R. charge nurse to let him know they'd be out for awhile. For something like that, I'm happy to be wrong.

Have a great Friday!


* Whose idea was that, anyway?