Traffic Jam

I hope everyone had a good weekend and I am wishing everyone a happy Monday. I know Monday mornings can get crazy, running slightly late to work after the weekend, and if something can go wrong with the traffic, it always will on a Monday.

In Las Vegas the traffic was insane any day of the week. The city grew so fast that the road construction was always trying to keep up with the population, but they were so far behind. I lived up north because Nellis AFB was in that direction and it was close for Ryan to get to work. He spent a few years with a 1 hr communte for something that was only 20 miles away-highway driving too. So we moved there to decrease his communte time. Luckily it only increased mine by 5-10 minutes, which was do-able.

Living on a small island we knew we were getting lucky with no more rush hour traffic. The roads here are all what we would call side streets. They just finished the first highway here called with Via Rapida. It goes from Praia da Vitoria to Angra do Heriosmo, which are the two cities on this island. We arrived at the tail end of the road construction. Just a few weeks ago we realized the VR was completed and was actively using 2 lanes in each direction. I say actively using 2 lanes in each direction because for a long time only one side was used for both directions of traffic. But this changed on a daily basis making it rather unsafe. Here is what I mean.

The orange cones are letting us know that the other lane is coming at us. In fact, here it is our car that would be considered driving on the wrong side of a divided highway. You just really had to pay attention here.

This next picture I love. I think this is the only place in the world where you will find a cobble stone road turn right into a brand new highway.

So with these roads is there rush hour traffic? Never. The only place that even has a street light is Angra, everything else uses stop signs (yes, the same from the US). So what kind of traffic jam almost made me late to school yesterday...This kind!!!

This is the kind of thing you can not plan for, can not account for, and usually works as a good excuse as to why you were late somewhere. You simply can not predict the behavior of cows when they are in the road.

Luckily I was only caught for about 10 minutes as the famers moved them from one field to another. The problem was that they lost one cow. I saw him go off and up a side dirt road, and attempt to be a giraffe. I wish I could have explained the theory of evolution to this cow but he wanted to keep trying really hard to reach the high up leaves. In the end they rounded up all the cows and they turned down another dirt road. This ended my traffic jam. Only problem with sharing the road with cows is the "brown mess" that remains, if you catch my drift.
Next up on intersting finds would be our new pet spider. We never asked for one, but we got one. In Vegas we had Black Widows which can be hazardous to the health so we were careful observers for these. But here we did not really think of it as a problem. Last weekend we spotted this spider and nearly had a heart attack.

It resembled a bumble bee so we went inside to goodgle search for a bumble bee looking spider and we discovered this is a St. Andrews Spider . Thankfully now poisonous and can be helpful. So we decided to keep it and basicaly leave it be in the back yard by the laundry room door, which we never use. This web has now doubled in size and I swear this spider is bigger now. The good news is that I am not scared despite the very large size.

Well, I hate to say it but because of school over the weekend I do not have anything cool to share. Is it sad that my highlight was my traffic jam. Oh, and I did get some good mail yesterday.

First I got not one, but two mailings from McNeil with info and samples of sun crystals. Has anyone tried these? I do not usually have anything that requires a sweetener, but I will make myself a coffee drink or something and give it a try. It is a mix of pure cane sugar and stevia. Only 5 calories a packet and the sweetness is equivalent to 2 teaspoons of sugar. So, we will see.

I got my ADA journal.
and my APHA journal
and this was the strangest of them all. How did I ever end up (with my correct name and APO address for that matter) on the mailing list for this catalog of needle work and crafts. Do I look like I am bored over here? Did someone sell my name? I have never done any needlework in life. I am wondering if this is a sign and maybe I should start? Nah, that can't be it.

QUESTIONS: What kinds of traffic jams do you have where you live? Any scary spiders living near your house? What is the strangest piece of junk mail you ever received?

HAPPY MONDAY!!!