just an observation about life here in l.a.
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
Driving in Los Angeles is never easy -- everyone is in a hurry and if you get ahead of them, you might get where you're going before they get where they're getting.
One of the most annoying things is that no one uses their signal lights. There is, unfortunately, a very good reason why: because if you use your signal to indicate you will be switching lanes, the car in the lane you want to be in very often will speed up to block your entering the lane.
As we drove home from the airport the other night:
DARIN
I put on my blinker the other day
and the car behind me slowed down
to let me in.
DIANE
Darin, we were in Northern
California.
DARIN
No, before our trip.
Beat.
DIANE
Damn tourists.
Yesterday we went to Fuddrucker's in Burbank for lunch. (Hey, when you're both at home every day, you can drive twenty miles to lunch; it becomes an expedition.) I had a mushroom cheeseburger.
I was not aware of how greasy their mushroom cheeseburgers were, primarily because of the mushrooms (which are fried).
I have been paying for my culinary decision ever since. Oy.
"From now on," said Darin, "just get a cheeseburger."
Okay.
The answer to yesterday's question: Well, I guess THAT was a trick question, because Miriam Nadel pointed out to me the elections in East Timor weren't this past weekend, they were on Monday. But I'd heard about them so often this weekend...plus I'd heard some about the results Monday morning, which immediately made me think the voting had been the day before. Of course, East Timor is just a wee bit ahead of Los Angeles, so they were well into the vote by the time morning happened here. Eep.
Anyhow, the East Timorese voted on whether they wanted independence or whether they wanted to stay with Indonesia. Ballots are being mixed up, so that ballot counters don't know which provinces voted which way, so that pro-Indonesia or pro-independence factions don't take out reprisals on those provinces.
According to some reports, 98.6% of registered voters voted. That's pretty darn amazing.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com