So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Bushman]

Amtrak, on some train lines, has a "quiet" car - no cellphones, no loud conversations. It's heaven.

We have similar on commuter cars during 7am and pm rush hours here in Chicago. It's a blessing in the morning to get an extra hour of sleep.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Amtrak, on some train lines, has a "quiet" car - no cellphones, no loud conversations. It's heaven.

We must import that to Germany!!

I'll do my very best!!

 

[Hat and Rehat]

It’s hard to beat ham hocks and beans, an almost staple item on our working-class dinner table when I was a kid. My version typically includes carrot, onion, and celery.

Most recipes call for discarding the big chunks of fat after cooking, but I say to hell with that, much as my cardiologist might disagree. That’s where the flavor is.

My Swedish heritage didn't include that. I remember ham with pineapple slices, but it probably came from mom's red checked cookbook.
Upon arrival in Denver in '79 I resided in a "flop house" at 12th and California, $35/week if you used the hall bathrooms, $40 for an apt with a bath. We splurged!
Manpower temporary labor service was a block away. A bar, The Overtime Inn, was in the same building, and owned by the same people, and they cashed our checks!
For a Midwest innocent boy out of Chicago, via the suburbs, it was an educational experience. The scales were falling away.
Transients, all of us, in our way.
A lot of Souix Nation, in Denver for work. They knifed each other quite a bit. Others were more spiritual, and into ghost dance peyote rituals, which fascinated me immensely at that time of life (Castaneda, Don Juan in my literary background, and 8 grams of mescaline in my van when I hit Denver besides -- innocent is a subjective concept).
Minimum wage was $2.73/hr. A scrawny transient couple from Texas befriended my Hoosier girlfriend and I. They invited us over (up one floor) for hammocks and navy beans. I became a believer!


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[Hat and Rehat]

Have you ever typed a rather long response, carefully re-read it, checking for grammar and spelling mistakes, clicked submit............and then lost it, and you didn't store it previously? Nowadays. I always cut & paste before submitting.

That's the sort of trivia I'm on about. Whether it's the ditherer in front of you in the queue, the endless phone menu, whilst all the time your bill is being run up, as you exasperatingly try to get through to the right person, or just officialdom.

For a while, I have been searching on the internet for the rubber door seals that go around the edge of the car door, for my old MG. The 60 odd year old ones have perished causing the back seat to be somewhat draughty.

By chance, I came across someone who had a Morris, the model on which my car is based. He had bought twenty odd yards of rubber seal and was selling it in pre-cut lengths to fellow enthusiasts. I emailed him, with a picture of my car, asking would the seal fit. It would. I bought and paid for the strips on-line, there & then.

That was on a Monday, mid-afternoon. They arrived on Friday. I emailed him to say they had finally arrived and that the carrier must have been having a tea-break, or some other sarcastic remark. He e-mailed me back saying that the goods had been picked up on Wednesday and delivered on Friday, which he thought was very good.

It didn't wash, what ticked me off was, he had my money, didn't acknowledge that, didn't say he wouldn't be despatching the seals until Wednesday. I had been expecting arrival to be Tuesday, even booking the car into the garage to have the work done. It would have been easy to e-mail back and have a go. But I just let it be, life's too short.

What's rubbed you up the wrong way of late? Have you had a phone bill that's had you mouthing: WTF? Did you land at one airport and your luggage at another? Or an excessive tax demand? Do share, I can't be alone.

I just lost a long one about some vintage shoes, responding to you!
I need a drink!

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[Hat and Rehat]

I have trouble typing in the quick reply box (or the advanced). Letters often don’t make it to the page and I had to go back and carefully place a letter here and a letter there. So I just use a word processor now and copy and paste into the box. It still makes it look odd though.


I have several pet peeves elsewhere though. I hate people who are too ignorant to use turn signals. You are sitting at a stop sign. Here comes a car from your left. Its approaching closer and closer and you think its going to go on by (so you don’t cross the road in front of you of course), then they turn. No signal at all! Gah! Makes my blood pressure shoot straight up!


The other pet peeve is the person who is in the check out line in front of me. Unloads all their items. Stands there and watches the check out girl scan each item and doesn’t lift a finger to help her put the bags in the cart. So the poor girl has to stop and do it herself, then go back to scanning. People are lining up behind her and that person jusst stands there watching. THEN, after its all scanned and put into the cart, they start looking for their checkbook to write a freaking check!


That’ll make you want to slap someone.


(I have been known to put the person’s bags in the cart myself to speed things along).

I drive a 3\4 ton van.
I do not countanace idiots.
If they don't know how to drive, I claim their space.

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[Hat and Rehat]

I get cross when I see parents of babies and toddlers recklessly putting them into or taking them out of their seats through the door on the side of their car that opens into the road and oncoming traffic a prolonged process with the door wide open and their butts sticking out slowing or stopping traffic and risking injury to stupid parent (deserved?) and innocent tot (undeserved!). How hard is it to use the much safer sidewalk/pavement side or even parking appropriately if necessary?

I figure we would all be better off if they hadn't bred in the first place, and maybe nature will correct the error.

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[GHT]

I just lost a long one about some vintage shoes, responding to you!
I need a drink!

Do you find that when that happens, the number of profanities that you know, or can lay your tongue to, is really quite surprising?

 

[Trenchfriend]

Amtrak, on some train lines, has a "quiet" car - no cellphones, no loud conversations. It's heaven.

I already sent an e-mail to Deutsche Bahn AG!!

Let's see, what happens...

 

[Trenchfriend]

I mean, they got quiet-sections in the ICE, but what got this to do with normal peoples-working class travelling?

We need it in all Second class trains!

 

[Hercule]

Why is it that every time I see the Dr. or have business with the medical profession, long waits and bad service is always excused because they're dealing with a "new system." Its getting to be a tiresome excuse.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Popular excuse in old Germany, too!

 

[LizzieMaine]

System upgrades are the root of all evil.

 

[tonyb]

Why is it that every time I see the Dr. or have business with the medical profession, long waits and bad service is always excused because they're dealing with a "new system." Its getting to be a tiresome excuse.

Some medical practices got the memo. And some didn’t.

I fully appreciate how some patients’ predicaments trump mine, such as the morning a few years back when my fairly minor surgical procedure got delayed by a couple hours due to the unexpected difficulties the surgeon encountered with the guy ahead of me. I just wish they had bothered to let me know why I was left lying on that not exactly comfortable “bed” for considerably longer than anticipated. I mean, damn, people, I’m here to get knocked out and cut open, which ain’t something you do just for the hell of it. And there I lay, all undressed and nowhere to go, with no explanation.

Contrast that with a couple of practices who make a point of keeping the patients informed. Some have signs instructing patients waiting more than 15 minutes past the appointment times to check back with the reception desk.

I could sing the praises of the ob/gyn who performed a surgery on my wife back in June, and of everyone we encountered at his practice and the hospital. They kept us informed every step of the way. On one earlier visit we were kept waiting because another patient’s baby wasn’t hurrying his or her way into this world of woe. That’ll happen. So you fiddle with your phone or read People or Highlights for Children in the waiting room.

 

[ChrisB]

We need it in all Second class trains!

We should have a classless society, commuters of the world, unite!

 

[tonyb]

System upgrades are the root of all evil.

A few years back an iPhone upgrade crashed my phone. Literally hours of going back and forth with Apple customer service (hah!) resulted in them replacing the phone. Had I not been so forceful and persistent, I just would have been SOL.

 

[GHT]

We should have a classless society, commuters of the world, unite!

Some chance of that. Many years ago I discovered a worrying lump in the crown jewels. My doctor got me an appointment with a specialist. The specialist was one of the most snobbish persons that I have ever come across. Instead of putting on surgical gloves to examine my testicles, he used a small wooden spatula. It annoyed me so much that I held my scrotum and told him that we are all made the same. He completely ignored me, telling me that it was nothing to worry about. In an accent that I can't even begin to describe he informed me that I had: "A waricose wein." It's still there year's later, my waricose wein. My missus will say, if she catches me having a clandestine scratch, "Wayne playing up?"

 

[Trenchfriend]

A little delicacy besides. When you visit Germany, you have to watch out for these waggons (with the small doors!) in our Intercitys:

These are the famous old UIC-X-waggons. A wonderful touch of the past. These refitted express-coaches are up to 67 years old! In the late 80s, they were freed from asbestos and got their first refit. Today, the remaining ones are refitted as good as possible.

But you have to be sporty and trim to go in.

 

[Harp]

We have similar on commuter cars during 7am and pm rush hours here in Chicago...

Rock Island quiet cars..."please adhere to the quiet car rules..."

Several years ago a buddy of mine-a federal judge-and I were forced by circumstance to sit inside one of the
quiet cars-second car from the back-and continued our discussion about some legal matters, though in a quiet tone.
And the passenger behind us erupted in displeasure "this is the quiet car!"
My friend looked at me, shrugged and asked that I not start a constitutional argument over free speech,
so I broke out laughing. And continued to talk quietly until the conductor came by, the regular train conductor
who knew us both, and all three of us started a kitch. The lady seated behind got up and moved in a fit.
I mean a quiet discussion shouldn't be verboten.

 

[Hat and Rehat]

Do you find that when that happens, the number of profanities that you know, or can lay your tongue to, is really quite surprising?

I believe that's called a blue streak.

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[Hat and Rehat]

System upgrades are the root of all evil.

You are the Rodney Dangerfield of the Lounge, Lizzie.
One line zingers par excellance.

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