Today’s question is:  Why do people park between the lines?

Background:  I was parking my car in a parallel parking spot a month or so ago and I came across this car that was parked between two parking spots.  How do I know there were two spots?  It was a lined section of parallel parking in the village just North of mine.  All the spots in town are marked.  So parking behind this guy was not a possibility, let me show you why…..

See that “T” well either the front bumper of the car should be to the right of it or the back bumper of the car should be to the left of it.  The car should definitely not be parked in the middle.  What I wonder is, did this guy (gal) have no idea what the lines were for?  Did he/she not care?  Did he/she intentionally do it so no one would hit, or bump his/her precious car?  Or did the lines go totally unnoticed?  It’s impossible to tell, really, but it sure makes me wonder.

People never cease to cause me to scratch my head.

Today’s question is:  What’s up with the intensity of the storms lately?

Background: In the past 4 years it seems the storms in the area I live have raised in intensity.  I blogged about the horrible storm that rolled in one afternoon 4 years ago.  We have had a number of vicious storms since but on Monday morning one hit particularly hard.

At 7:30am when I walked the dog it was gorgeous out.  You would never have known such a dozy was on the way.  But 30 minutes later, what a storm, it was green and blowing hard.  The next couple of hours were dark and gloomy so we watched a movie and relaxed at home.  Then I ventured out and saw the destruction I was a little shocked.

Here are some examples of poor trees that went down in the storm. This first one was ripped right out at the base…

 The next one just kind of split in half….

 This was a bunch of tree branches that were blocking our sidewalk…..

 This one bent in half at the base, amazing……

 This entire tree uprooted, but missed the house right next door, thankfully….

 This tree did not miss the house, it took the left corner off.  As you can see the tree used to be attached to that 7 foot high stump in the front of the picture slightly to the right…..

 Oddly, this small tree just tipped over at the base, so strange….

 The next two pictures are of the same tree.  This first one is of the edge of the ground sticking straight up in the air, you can see the annuals planted and neatly still in their rows.  The next picture is of the backside, the ripped out roots and the partially wrecked driveway.  That root stood at least a foot taller than I (5’3″)…….

 Check out this enormous tree, luckily the house had minimal damage….

Yesterday my local paper posted a link to a story on Twitter  about one of our villages oldest trees. You can read it here, it’s sad to have lost a tree that was 265 years old and so enormous (pictures on site).

Lastly, the other casualties of the storm lie in power outages.  As of this morning I still had several friends without any power.  If you drive through the town you can see many extension cords running across the streets as neighbors help neighbors keep their sanity and food supplies.  However what I didn’t expect was one of the local grocers to be without power.  As I walked through the doors the place was mostly dark and the produce, meat, freezer and dairy sections were cleaned out.  It has been more than two days since they had power.  I managed to get a few things, namely cash at the cash machine and as I walked out I saw several of the employees out front doing this……

It is so sad to see that food just getting dumped but with no end to the power outage in site, I guess it’s the only thing they can do.

So I wonder if this is part of what we should now expect as far as storms go in the midwest, strong and fierce, scary and destructive?

Today’s question is:  Why do some people feel the need to control everything?

Background:  My man and I are headed out onto a yacht on lake michigan tonight for a few drinks with some of his clients.  One of his co-workers will be with us as well.  This co-worker planned the whole event, every detail, even down to what my man and I should wear.

Yep, that’s right she told us what to wear.  Now, I am a grown woman, one that has never had a hard time picking out an outfit for a client engagement.  I have good taste and have some very lovely outfits.  I hardly need some woman at my husband’s work dictating what I should wear to any engagement.  Nor do I welcome such advice.

As a result, Paul will not be wearing the linen shorts she suggested, because 1. he doesn’t have any and 2. I wouldn’t let him wear them if he did, too wrinkly.  I will be wearing a dress, which is what I was instructed to wear,  but for goodness sakes, it’s what I would have worn without direction.

So the question remains, why do some people feel the need to control everything? Even to the extent of dictating the clothing choices of his/her colleagues?