My parents returned from Chicago yesterday and I had to drive to the airport to get them. It was early-ish in the morning, just about 9:30, and the freeway traffic was still fairly light. Normally, I'm racing to work and I thought, you know, I'm just going to have a nice, leisurely drive to the airport. A couple of extra minutes isn't that big a deal. I hardly had that thought when on the other side of the interstate, I saw a cop in an unmarked SUV had someone pulled over.
I timed my ride, BTW, and I discovered that driving just a few miles over the speed limit only put me 1-2 minutes behind Patti's Wild Weekday Ride. Makes me rethink how fast I drive into work. If it's only saving me a couple of minutes, is it worth the stress? If I can leave the house just five minutes earlier, I can shave a lot of tension off the commute. The problem will be getting out of the house earlier. No matter how hard I try, my time to get ready always expands to fill the time I have left. If that makes sense. :-/
But I digress. So as I continue to the airport, traffic became really heavy and I'm like, whoa! Then I had an epiphany; the Mall of America. And it's almost Thanksgiving, which is the start of the holiday shopping season. I was right. Once I passed the two exits for the megamall, traffic dropped right off again and there was hardly anyone at the airport. I love that. The airport is often a hairy snarl that leaves me tense and using profanity. :-)
I made the return trip at a leisurely pace too. And you know what? At the on-ramp right before the one where I get off, there was an SUV parked on the side. I glanced over and I saw the police patch on the driver's left shoulder. Yep, the cop was still there. I'm amazed, though, that he hadn't pegged any of the drivers that had zoomed past me. They were driving 10-15 mph over the limit (like I usually do. blush.), but maybe he was waiting for bigger fish. Minnesota drivers do go really, really fast and I'm sure it was just a matter of time until he found someone going even farther over the limit.
After trying to write all day (I got stuff done, but it was a struggle. But then this whole story has been an awful fight from day one. :-( ), I put Rome into the DVD player. It's my latest NetFlix rental and a television series from HBO. I was sure I'd enjoy it and it came recommended to me from someone who had HBO, but I didn't like it. I held on for about 15 minutes, waiting to become interested and I just never was. Finally, I decided there was no point wasting my time watching this and I stopped the disk and watched a repeat of VH1's Top 100 Songs of the 80s.
