My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant

So on the way back from the Gorge yesterday, I'm stuck in (by Portland standards) heavy traffic and nearing home. I find myself behind some clod in a Lexis and he's actually driving slower then traffic as we go up the hill. Then he starts to weave into the bike lane and for about 400' he's driving in both the right lane and said bike lane. No bikes are in said lane btw. I can't really drive around him because 2 blocks later later I need to turn right and the traffic is such that I'm not going to get around him. As we make our way to the light I can see that he's playing on PDA/Cell phone and looking up to make sur ehe doesn't cause an accident. Now the folks in the left lane are cutting in front of him and because he's driving so slow we miss the light. He's obviously not paying attention to traffic and I give him a honk at this point.

As we settle up to the red light he rolls down his window and starts to yell at me (I'm right behind him in my mini-van). Honestly I shake my head at this point and yell back "Dude, you're not paying attention to traffic, that's why I honked at you." The response is "Do you want to settle this like men!" I shake my head again and ignore the threat and repeat myself again "you're paying attention to traffic, you have your head out the window and you can't see the light, you're obviously not paying attention to traffic" More yelling back and forth. I hate to say it but this whole thing is ludicrous. Part of me is thinking, did I really need to honk at this retard, another part of me is laughing that this same retard is all ass hurt about having been called out about his bad driving and his ego won't let roll the window back up and get on with his sad ass life.

Anyway, the light turns green and traffic begins to roll, well all accept our lane as this same retard is still yelling at me about how great a driver he is and how big an asshole I am. Again, I repeat myself with how he's not paying attention to traffic and how he hasn't noticed the light is green. His response is classic, he yells about knowing it's green and that it's more important that he yells at me and be right then to get on with life at this point. Since he's now blocking traffic for at least a mile and people are passing our yelling match everyone else stuck behind him is getting mad and they start to honk. It's at this point Mr Retard finally figures out that he's in the wrong rolls up his window and starts to drive. Another block later and I'm turning and getting on with mine.

A day later I'm not really feeling proud of being such and irritant over such a stupid thing. That having been said I still think the guy was amusing for being so butt hurt over a honk. I really hope he worked out his frustrations and didn't go home and beat the wife and/or kids.

I'm just like all these other collector losers

"You think it's healthy to obsessively collect things? You can't relate to other people, so you fill your life with stuff... I'm just like all these other collector losers. "

I've been a collector of crap off and on during much of life. As a teenager it was comics, albums and old games. The music kept coming and I still buy CD vs downloading and copying all my friends music for some odd reason. I'm now back to four scooters (2xLambretta's and 2xVespas). I'll need to get rid of 2 of them in the next year if I want to keep from letting the obsession back into my life. Camera's are another "thing" i have too much of too. I can at least use a camera to create other things so to say, so they are not really an obsession in my book since they are like brushes, paint and canvas of sorts. Tools after all. Oddly enough it took me a long time to really look at collecting and collectors.

When I restored film I worked with a "Film Collector" who fucking drove me nuts. He always wanted everything we were suppose to throw out. It took looking at his obsession to really put my own obsessions into light. My parents sold the house I grew up in, it was easily for me to take all my childhood obsessions and sell them off. Really easy actually. The comicbook and games went quick and easily. But I turned around and stared the scooter buying very quickly after that. One fueled another. When I moved to Portland I was easily able to get myself to sell off all my running scooters too. Didn't need em, best to find em a good home. The nicely restorred TV175 Lambretta I built and rode once was easily to sell off too. I hope I can do it again as easily with the two scooters I'm currently building. That having been said, I know i need to get paid if I do!

Currently I'm being lazy about my book collections. Honestly I'm not about to ever open half of these books I read 10-20 years ago.

Gym Socks

So since being laid off I've tried to get back into a very regular exercise routine and mostly failiing at it. I'll go 5 days a week for 2-4 weeks and then either hurt myself or take a break that lasts 1-3 months. My last attempt is now nearly 2 months long and so far I haven't hurt myself (which honestly has been the most common problem).

Right now I'm doing 40 minutes on the tread mill (3 miles I think?).
Then 20 minutes on tread mill (300 stairs I think?).
Followed by 30 minutes in the pool (16 lengths or 8 laps) - freestyle.

One of the problems with my old routine was that I'd get to certain point concerning the tread mill and either I'd need to start running as I can only walk it so quickly. I've opted to get to the long quick walk, but then kill it (I started off at an hour on the tread mill for instance) and build up on the stair climber and swimming. So far, so good.

Lambretta

So I've been building a Lambretta Tv175 Series III motor scooter. Over the last week I hooked up all the cables and wiring and this weekend I wanted to start it up and see how well it was working. I remember to put gear oil in the engine since I accidentally spilled it out when I was building it. It actually kicked over on the 3rd try and promply died a moment later. The carb leaked a lot of fuel and it didn't seem to be getting all the oxygen it needed. 2 hours later I had rebuilt the carb twice and re-runned throttle cable. At best I could keep it going for a minute or two and then it would die. Ugh.

You can find lots of photos of the build so far as well as a couple of videos of me trying to start the damn thing at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/filmtwit/sets/72157623338894738/