Friday, August 03, 2007

Feeling the Love

I love San Jose. I love San Jose so much. Or not at all. Last night I drove home shaking my fist in the air saying, "I HATE you, San Jose. Hate, hate, HATE!" I went to a friend's bachelorette party downtown - normally I try to venture there as infrequently as possible. Paid $25 for a salad, naan, and iced tea, then walked a mile to the parking spot I found after 30 minutes of driving around, on the border of the ghetto, and paid for my supposedly "first two hours free" spot. Apparently you have to validate your ticket, but that is a new requirement and there is no signage telling you of the new requirement. Very handy when you're already in the car and driving out of the lot. Bastards. And the freeways here are utter nonesense. We're situated at the very tip of the Bay (as in the San Francisco Bay area), so the freeways will switch from north to south in some parts and depending where you enter the freeway, you may want to go south directionally, but still need to take north in order to achieve that goal. Very helpful when I'm already slightly directionally challenged. I've now decided to write down directions every time I venture to downtown, south San Jose, east San Jose - okay, honestly, it's any time I venture out of west San Jose. So. I drove north on 280, then north on 87 to arrive downtown. Easy enough. When I left downtown, I followed the signs for south 87. Makes sense right? But as I entered the freeway, I noticed a sign on the freeway above me marking the 280 exit I wanted off 87. The freeway entrance put me south of where I wanted to go! Really made no sense. The next exit was an expressway, so I couldn't turn around for about 2 miles, where I finally did a u-turn and went all the way back to get to 87 north. And then. And THEN, when I finally reached my exit, a work crew had just finished blocking off the exit lane to do road work, so I had to go two exits further before I could get off the freeway. And that's not mentioning the arsehole behind me who cut me off when I tried to merge out of the closing lane. Grr. So anyway, I lurve San Jose and the wonderful drivers and freeways and ghettos where you may or may not get mugged only blocks from the overpriced "Silicon Valley" fare.
I didn't stay for most of the bachelorette, because I needed to get some sleep and I woke with a bad sore throat yesterday, but the dinner was interesting enough. The girl getting married is from Chicago and went to school at Notre Dame, so most of the girls were from her home or college. Because I drove around for 30 minutes looking for parking, I had to take the last seat available and all the girls I know sat on the opposite side of the table. The girl I sat next to couldn't have been more opposite from me, but in a funny way. Oddly enough, she reminded me a lot of one of my best friends from home. Dramatic, always in the limelight drawing attention. She was a southern belle (hey ya'll!), over-the-top extravert. Very nice, but very loud and dramatic. I'm generally quiet in large groups and thrive more in smaller circles. Needless to say, I collapsed in tiredness when I finally arrived home.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seems you had a hectic time! Take care.

Rose Red Art said...

Sounds like quite a journey!

Yvonne said...

Good lord woman that sounds like a nightmare. I couldn't deal with that at all.

But to make up for it (hopefully) I've nominated you for a Creative Blogger Award!

Angie said...

Oh dear, but I hope it made you all laugh since that was the point of the rant. Husband sure laughed *at* me when I told him, but I got even when he got lost on Sunday. Ha ha.
Thanks, hellojed! *blushes*