The Suck-tastic Summer

Back on June 1st, I was pretty excited for summer's start.  Yes, we all needed this break from the work world to reset ourselves and the possible summer activities were endless. After the first week and a half,  summer changed.

I walked over to my car only to find that it had been broken into. I was a bit amazed at how the thief opened the car since there were no broken windows, doors or keyholes. Odd, but I'm sure there are plenty of ways that lowlives do their work without any visible damage. Yes, he took some things of value, but the objects he took mean nothing to me. Stuff is stuff and unimportant. I'm glad my car wasn't stolen or damaged in any way. I'm glad I (or anyone else) wasn't in the car when it happened. That's the important part. I did have to call the police though. They came, were nice, CSI did their thing and the report was done. I have no expectations that whoever did this will be caught. It's a car break in...surely not high on the investigation priority list. Other elements about this bother me. Those things lead to an insecure feeling and insomnia.

Those two feed off of each other for sure. I've dealt with insomnia before so I know I can handle it, but it does change your mood. The car-insurance ordeal is still not complete and it won't for a bit.

After that summer opener event, I had to dog/house sit for my parents. I've done this plenty of times and it's not a bother. While dog/house sitting, I made plans with a friend to watch World War Z on a Saturday. That morning I get a call telling me that I have to go to some neighborhood assembly meeting in the place of my father. WHAT? So I had traded in movie time to drive an hour away and sit at a meeting where all people wanted to do was argue. I was stuck there for three hours and left with a headache. I had of course moved my plans to Sunday.

I heard something kind of odd Sunday morning. I heard a drop of water. Sometimes when it rains a lot, a bit of water will drip through the air conditioner. That's what I thought it was since it hasn't stopped raining all summer. When I open my eyes, the whole room is flooded. I got up to check if it was coming from the bathroom. Nope. I opened the door and the whole hallway was covered in water. My parent's and brother's rooms all flooded. Water was cascading down the stairs to the first floor. The dining room and sitting room, flooded. I could hear water running, but didn't know where it was coming from until I went into the hallway bathroom. The culprit? The plastic screw on the toilet hose had broken off. Water everywhere. I turned off the water valve, but there was still some coming out. I couldn't get it all the way shut....old house...old valves. So I had to go outside and turn the main water valve off. There was also drops of water coming down from the kitchen, laundry and garage roofs.

I called for help. Four mops, one squeegee, one wet vac, four people and six hours later, the house was dry. We also moved everything that had gotten wet to other places and the actual clean up began. After a week of cleaning and throwing away water damaged items, we're still not done. That's a testament to my parent's "hoarding". So much stuff.

I'm hoping mid and end of July will make up for how suck-tastic the summer has been.

Windshield Goes Green

Today I went to one of the many malls in search for new computer speakers. On my way to the mall, it was raining. It's been raining everyday for about 2 weeks now, so today was no different.
The drive was nothing out of the ordinary until...

...a piece of a tree branch fell and smacked my windshield! Thank goodness it wasn't the whole branch, it was just about 12 inches long, soft and full of greenage. This all happened really fast so it's safe to say it scared the F*CK out of me. **SMACK** Of course since it was raining, I had the wipers on and the branch got stuck on the left one. Great! It wasn't enough to just scare me, it also had to block my view.

There really wasn't a place I could stop and remove it. Plus, the rain had picked up and I realized I'd also left my unbrella at home. So I waited for a red light and tried to remove it without getting out of the car. That didn't work. I used the wiper as little as possible and wouldn't you know it, the branch fell off when I reached the mall.

Just another random act to add to my list.

Stop, Go...Stop...TAPON!

That's how traffic was this morning: Stop, go and just plain STOP.

I left the house at the same time I always do, 7am. By 7:15am I was on 177 next to Hogar Crea. That's where traffic just wasn't moving. At the time I had no idea what was going on and since my car's radio isn't working it's not like I could've turned the news on. I knew something was going on because traffic on the other side was flowing and we were the only one's not moving. So after about 10min of just sitting there I put the car in park, sat back and waited. The man next to me just turned his car off.

Little by little we started to move. As soon as we started going down, I could see in the distance that NO ONE was being allowed to go straight. Traffic was being diverted left and right. I saw 3 ambulances and numerous police cars drive up in the half hour I was stuck in traffic. When I finally got to work, I heard there had been a bad accident down the way. It wasn't till I got home in the afternoon that I finally saw on the news what had happened.

It's awful.

¡TAPON!

¡Que tapon carajo!

I was driving home tonight after my exercise walk and took the same route I always take. I hit traffic at Las Cumbres which struck me as odd since I've never been stuck there before. Sure there's always traffic towards Caguas, but it was almost 7pm...traffic should've been over by then. No.

It took me more than 20 min to get from Las Cumbres to the highway entrance/exit. When I finally make it onto the highway, I see that the newest movable Jersey wall is in effect. I don't know why they put that on the right side of the highway, but it's there. Essentially all they did was temporarily eliminate the emergency shoulder lane. Why?

Ever since the traffic laws have gotten stricter, I've rarely seen anyone attempt a shoulder run. If this is going to be a common thing, then I hope no one has an emergency during that section of the road...because there is no shoulder to stop at and they'll be surrounded by irate PRican drivers. I know this is a long weekend and people are most likely leaving the metro area hence more traffic, but I'm sure this latest wall shifting has something to do with the increase in traffic as well.