Honestly, the only actual words I remember from the motorcycle safety courses.
The instructors would tell us that when it came time to do an exercise where you ride toward the instructor, getting up to speed as you went.
Your job was not to anticipate the need to stop before you hit them, trusting that they'd tell you to brake just in time.
The point of the exercise is to test your reflexes against surprise. Make sure you don't end up painted onto the car in front of you.
I remembered it suddenly because of drivers' frustrating tendency to anticipate.
On my route to and from work, there are several points where drivers are most likely to do it. Most of them being traffic lights.
Every single goddamn time, they put on their brakes as they approach the light... as if prepping for it to turn red.
Which it very rarely ever does.
And their recovery from the slow down isn't quick.
Which means other cars take advantage of their bullshit and now it's three cars in front of me instead of just the one.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
But.
It's Friday.
Fucking praise the deity responsible for this day.
Which is apparently... Freya.
Friday is named after the Norse goddess Frigg or Freya. The name comes from the Old English "Frigedæg," meaning "Frigg's day," connecting the day to the Germanic goddess of fertility and love.
Praise be to you, Freya. Long may you reign.
Because seriously: it was a short week due to the Labor Day holiday, but shit: it's as if the past few days have done all they could to make the week feel like a regular week.
And they goddamn succeeded.
Had a pretty long conversation with Eli this morning.
...Eli's the name I'm giving to my singular favorite gate guard.
And I knew immediately what he was gonna talk about, because it was on my mind as well: the tarp.
See, military bases have some sort of covering over their gates to help the folks that stand watch... weather the weather.
Usually they're hard coverings, but in the case of this particular checkpoint... it'd started to fail.
And I'm sure that in typical Navy bullshittery, it was only a matter of time before it was catastrophic.
So...
Months ago, they removed the cover before it could squish Eli and his kin.
Which is great.
But it's been that same amount of time since they've had a covering to... weather the weather.
Within the past week, they had contractors out there installing a new one, though. As I'd surmised, it was a tarp. Industrial grade, maybe, but still a tarp.
Steve had mentioned it the other day in that it was stupid to put a tarp up while we're still in hurricane season. I agreed and joked that maybe they were gonna cut slats in it for relief.
Nope.
Got in this morning and it was gone.
"Two days," Eli said. "I didn't think it'd last long, but I kinda figured it'd be more than two days."
We joked about it for a few minutes and crossed our metaphorical fingers for something more resilient.
Got to the office, logged in, and discovered that boss man had a way to give me a grand send off into the weekend: another fucking project demo.
Because fuck me, that's why.
Despite the fact that he's had more personal demos of the fucking thing than any actual customer has, he wants another one.
Fortunately, we deploy it on Monday.
So unless he wants some egg on his face from me sending out a cancelation of the deployment notice of a project that's gotten solid positive feedback from the customers that I've given personal tours to, the worst he can do is get angry.
...Which isn't great consolation.
But... it's Frigg's day.
So fuck it.
Cheers, all.
乾杯.