commuting thoughts

When a road turns into a construction zone for months on end, like the Boulevard of the Allies is now, I wonder if the owners of the billboards along it can charge more to advertisers. After all, the linger time is longer. And because it's a major commuting artery, I don't think they're getting significantly fewer impressions than under normal traffic conditions.

I spent years thinking that the sign "left turn signal" was a command, not an advisory. Probably because I grew up in Pittsburgh, where people don't use turn signals. Eventually I realized that not all road signs contain verbs. (Consider "end road work". :-) )

The parking lot I use at work is *under* the Birmingham bridge. For the last several days there have been large construction-type vehicles doing who-knows-what under the bridge (the effect is blocked-off parking spaces). I hope that's preventative maintenance, rather than "oh, we should have fixed this years ago" maintenance.

(no subject)

From browngirl: Cleaning the Fucking Kitchen for Dummies.

mail

Apparently I caused an anthrax scare yesterday. Oops.

So, about a week ago someone contacted me about a possible On the Mark gig, and I promised to send her a demo tape. So I did, a few days ago. (We get few enough of these that I still individually craft the demo tapes based on the type of music the customer appears to want.)

Yesterday there was a message on the machine: "Hi, you sent us something bulky with extra postage, and we don't recognize your name, and we're afraid to open it, so could you call us back and tell us what this is?" This was followed a couple messages later by one that said "oh, oops, you're the music group we talked to!".

Oops.

The postage was AFAIK correct; it's what it takes to mail a cassette in a small padded envelope. I was out of small padded envelopes, so I took a small sheet of foam that had come wrapped around some CDs, wrapped the cassette in that, and put the whole thing in a regular envelope. So maybe I overpaid by an ounce, but I don't think so.