I brake for snakes

It's been too long between posts. (If there are no posts to a blog nobody's reading yet, does it make a sound?)

Anyhow...

Longer ago than I care to admit, I was heading home from my dead-end job (well, dead-end unless I want to move to India — that's where all our work is going!) in a local office park. In the middle of the main drag were 2 young men who appeared to be flagging down cars in both directions.

When I get out of that place, all I want to do is GET HOME — now I'm dealing with panhandlers/hitchhikers/robbers/?.

I had little intention of stopping, so I was planning a route to keep moving without hurting anyone. Then the guys started moving to the side of the road. WTH?

That's when I saw the snake — probably a good 3 feet long, black with some kind of colored pattern on its back — making a beeline for the curb.

Only in Howard County does a snake get not one, but two crossing guards!

Glass-half-empty type that I am, you'll see a lot of griping in this blog (which I can only hope to make as humorous as Cranky in Columbia)... but there are also a lot of positive scenes like this one that make Howard County unique.

And I plan to publish them when I see them — even when they reveal my own misjudgments ;)

Civility works both ways

Hello Howard County! With my inaugural post, I need to get something off my chest.

Has anyone else noticed that those ubiquitous "Choose Civility" car magnets (don't call them bumper stickers!) are disproportionately* affixed to vehicles piloted by clueless or obnoxious drivers?

Any "incivility" (horns, fingers, etc.) such drivers are experiencing may be self-inflicted.



*Notice I did not say "exclusively". Feel free to believe I'm not talking about you — but as my late MIL might have said, "if the foo s#!ts..."


UPDATE: How did I miss this blog inspired by, and mostly devoted to, the potential hypocrisy of proclaiming civility? Enjoy!