The ying and the yang

Isn't it strange how one little incident can change your mood in an instant? Take today, for example; I was driving into work as normal, and I was in a pretty good mood. The roads were clear, I was listening to the Fight Club soundtrack (which I love), and then I almost had a massive car accident.

Well, I say 'I almost had,' but the truth is that it was actually some careless woman driving like a nutter that almost had the accident. I would've been the victim.

Basically, what happened was this: I was driving down a narrow residential road near the office. A lorry was pulling out of a side road on the left, and stopped half way out to give way to me. The nutter pulled round the back of the lorry, zoomed across the give way line, and aimed her Audi convertible directly at my passenger door. I slammed the brakes on. She slammed the breaks on. I braced for impact. She somehow stopped about a foot away from my car.

I shouted "OH MY GOD!"

She gesticulated that I should've let her through.

I went utterly *ballistic*.

In hindsight, the fact that I was shouting through my closed passenger side window and her windscreen kind of diminished the effect, and the volume at which I was verbalizing my response to her driving. I reckon she probably got the gist of it though. I'm actually a little startled by the colourful language I used. No doubt somewhere an entire flock* of nuns crossed themselves and wept in unison; if a kitten died every time the f-word is uttered there'd be a world kitty shortage by now.

I think I've used up my annual quota of the word "f**kwit."

Anyway, it kind of put me in a foul mood for a good few hours. I had to watch some videos of cats doing funny things on youtube to cheer up.

My throat is still a little hoarse, though, come to think of it.

What really got me, though, is that I was suddenly struck by the fact that there's a worrying trend of people not taking responsibility for their actions. This woman was clearly in the wrong, yet she was trying to transfer blame to me. Why do people have such difficulty admitting they're at fault? I like to think that if I do something wrong I'll put my hand up and say "oops, my bad." I've done it in the past, and I'm pretty damn sure I'll have to do it at some point in the future. Why can't others?

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On the plus side, I've had an awesome time post-work: I went to Kingston to go to the launch of Leopard at the Apple Store. Which is quite possibly the nerdiest thing I've done in ages. Go to a shop to see the launch of a new computer operating system?! Yes.

There was a bit of a queue outside the store (iQueue?), but when the store opened it moved pretty quickly and I was soon high-fiving the dude at the door and collecting a free Apple t-shirt. I usually don't high-five strangers, but he was really enthusiastic about it, and was counting his chain of high-fives (I was number 10 - obviously not everyone was in the mood), so I would've felt bad about just looking at him with disdain and rolling my eyes.

As long as one of the other store pixies didn't get a photo of me partaking in said high-five I think I can live with it.


*Just what is a group of nuns called?