Everthing's relative

Oh baby, what a morning. I have to work today and I was supposed to be in the big city by 8:30. I was woken up early by my cursed smoke detector. The battery went dead and it was doing its beeping thing. Long time readers who remember the hours long ordeal I went through on the day I moved into the McPartment in trying to replace the battery will appreciate how thrilled I was to discover this problem before I was even awake.

It could have worse I suppose. I knew where the new backup battery was and had a fair idea on how to replace it. I was super careful to remember which way the terminals went. Still it took a whole half hour to get the thing installed and required some copious cursing. All before I even had a sip of coffee. But it's done and it's all good and I'm still not too late.

So I get out the door just slightly delayed and to get to the road I need I generally take a short cut through a development. Now shortcut is something of a misnomer as there are 27 stop signs you have to get through to get to the main road. (Okay, it's really only 7 but it feels like more.) I get through the last one and I'll admit I didn't come to a full stop at the last one but I did slow to a bare roll. I never saw the cop until he was flashing his lights behind me.

So here I am, already late, within inches of the road I need to be on and this handsome young cop is asking me for my ID stuff saying I blew the stop sign completely off. I go into humble and dumb mode. Thought I had stopped. So many signs. Late and nervous. Blah, blah, blah. I don't even care if I get a ticket, I just need to be on the road.

Of course I should mention that I realized on Saturday when I got my vehicle excise bill that I had never changed my address at DMV and I also never got my last inspection sticker when I renewed the reg. I'm thinking I'm going to be there for a really long time.

Bless that young LEO, he came back in three minutes or less and handed me my stuff and told me he wasn't going to give me a ticket because I've never had a citation in my life. I wondered how that worked out but I wasn't to mention my three speeding violations in MA if he didn't. Maybe they're old enough now to have dropped off the records. In any event, the day improved since then. I got to where I needed to be only a half hour late and found it without any trouble, which was rather miraculous as it was a complicated destination.

Sometimes even bad stuff makes a day good. Escaping total disaster is somehow better than never having faced it at all.