Not A Highwayman.
Source: Google Maps
I hate driving on highways. I know they’re faster and more convenient but I get nervous about the high-speed merging and changing lanes when I’m just in the passenger seat. I can do it but I don’t care for it, and I accept that most long distance trips are going to take a little longer. The routes I take also tend to be more scenic so there’s that, and I appreciate that Google Maps has a nice “Avoid: Highways” function because apparently I’m not the only one who’d rather take a slow ride, take it easy.
It’s also hilarious to me that no matter where you’re going there’s a “Walk” option. This is not a pedestrian-friendly area. And by “This” I mean pretty much all of Nashville.
Source: Google Maps
I had to run an errand to a place I’ve never been to before—an area I’m just not all that familiar with, in fact, but I thought I had the directions down and I set out with a pretty good idea of where I was going. Except it turned out I didn’t have a good enough idea of where I was going. I pulled over into parking areas a few times to check my directions—I’m not going to look at directions while I’m driving because I don’t want to die in a fiery ball of twisted metal, and also I’d prefer to avoid wrecking the car. Where Google Maps was leading me just didn’t seem right—it was taking me south when my destination was north. I briefly tried Siri on my phone which literally led me around in circles because Siri doesn’t know that two wrongs don’t make a right or that three rights make a left.
Finally I gritted my teeth, focused my attention, and took the highway, which, surprisingly, was pretty free of other cars. Once I got to where I was going I could see the downtown skyline and that was all I needed to map out the area in my head and take the scenic route back.
The worst part of all this is the only reason I had to make the trip is because an item I’d ordered online was sent to the wrong store. I thought I’d save the shipping costs by having it sent to the store nearest me but for some reason their system looked at my location and said, “Oh no, we’ll send this as far away as we can get.” And while it was in transit three different customer service people told me, “Oh, sorry, this was our mistake. We’ll change the delivery address.”
Once it was delivered a fourth customer service person told me, “Oh, sorry, once it’s delivered that’s where it stays. Hey, did you know if you’d sent this to your home you’d have gotten free shipping?”
Source: gifer.com
I’ve been looking for a local Dungeons & Dragons group. Or any roleplaying game group, really. This is mainly because, for my mental health, I need something that gets me out of the house but also provides a way to engage with other people—actual, real people. Not to put down the friendships I’ve developed online, which are great, but various circumstances have me feeling the call of the real world. I also thought of D&D for nostalgic reasons. My teenage years were spent playing a lot of D&D, and other roleplaying games, although the games were really secondary to the friendships that went with them. I had my friends John and Jeff who got into D&D even before we were teenagers, and the three of us would have various adventures. Then, for some reason, early in our sophomore year of high school, John called me up and asked if I wanted to go to Michael’s house. I knew Michael vaguely, and when we showed up there were Jim, Trav, Allan, Torre, none of whom I’d ever met before, and, oh yeah, Michael, since it was his house, and suddenly there were eight of us sitting around a table battling it out against orcs, goblins, zombies—whatever, and it didn’t take long for all of us to become good friends. Eventually Michael’s younger brother Dave would join us.
There was an unexpected passenger in the car. I know a thing or two about spiders and even I was surprised to see the large orb web spun over the passenger seat, not to mention the large Aranea cavatica in the middle of the web, and if you know anything about spiders you know that’s the same species that was the hero of a famous children’s book. Some people think the pig is the hero of the book but let’s be clear: there’s a reason it’s called Charlotte’s Web and not Wilbur’s Mudhole.
There’s a footbridge that connects a shopping center to a public park. It’s a nice bridge—very big, very wide. Maybe that’s why they decided to embed little lights in the pillars, or uprights, or whatever those little sections are called that are slightly higher than the rest of the bridge. They’re nice and add a little aesthetic interest and, seriously, following 
Almost thirty years ago I went to a job interview. On my way in I passed by a hair salon, which was on the first floor. I was applying for a library job so it was weird to me that there was a hair salon in the same building but I didn’t care. There was a woman in a full-length rainbow dress in front of the salon. She had short red hair, glasses, and she was smoking a cigarette.
The optimist in me says that it’s a good thing to see an almost-overgrown fire hydrant because that means it’s never been needed. Then there’s the realist in me that says, hey, what happens if there’s a fire? Do firemen have some kind of record of where hydrants are in a specific area? Seriously, this one is weirdly tucked away in a back corner, but I guess the bright red color stands out enough against the green weeds that it makes it easy to find.
A deer wandered into our backyard. I’ve seen them in the front yard. One was even standing in the middle of the driveway one day when I came home. Before I could decide what to do–my options were waiting, honking the horn, or getting out and yelling at it, which I didn’t want to do because it had large antlers and those are scary when they’re on a deer and not mounted on a hunting lodge wall–it moved into the neighbor’s yard to feast on their tulips.