Our Way and the Highway

Monday was Labor Day; and, with the weekend's excitement already in the past, the only hard plans we had were to meet my sister at work to grab a bunch of boxes she had for us.

(Because that's how grown-up life works.)

But we slept in and were feeling lazy when we finally got up; so, the 10-minute trip up the road to meet Kelly turned into...

Well, why not stop at Dunkin for coffee and doughnuts on the way?

...Also, we don't really have lunch plans—and Qdoba did just send Athennia that coupon for a buy-one, get-one-free entree for her upcoming birthday—so, why not grab lunch while we're out as well?

...But, of course, Riley's not crazy about Qdoba; so, we'll just hit up McDonald's on the way home and grab her some of those horse-meat sponge nuggets she loves so much.

So, we each wolfed down a doughnut en route to Woods Services in Langhorne (where Kelly works)—but, since most of the campus was closed for the holiday weekend, they had gated off the usual entrance one would typically use to get to her office...

So, instead of us being able to pull in and drive about 11 feet to Kelly's office, she had directed us to give her a few minutes' notice so she could meet us at the main entrance by Maple Ave and South Flowers Mill and we could follow her through the labyrinth back to her office and grab the boxes.

If you've never been—as we hadn't—the Woods campus is basically the size of a small planet. I don't know the exact number of time zones we traversed, but it was definitely nonzero. It felt like we needlessly meandered all over the place—and we even crossed over Route 1 at one point.

The highlight was definitely this 100% pointless stop sign...

After we grabbed the boxes, Kelly led us through another timewarp to some street that puked us back out onto Maple Avenue—albeit at a place Athennia didn't immediately recognize.

So, before I could stop her, she made a right turn and inadvertently started heading back toward the apartment (whereas a left would've brought us up to Bellevue so we could jump back on Route 1 and shoot down to Qdoba).

Oh well. What's a few extra minutes cutting into all the nothing we had planned for the day? She decided to take the opportunity to show me the apartments (<cough> "luxury" <cough>, I'm sure) being built on the outskirts of the Oxford Valley Mall...

The rest of these are garbage pics because I had no shot from my vantage point in the passenger's seat. Enjoy!

A few minutes later, we were back on the highway—where we encountered an extraordinarily rare surprise...

What's this???

Can it be?!

No soccer-mom minivans?!

No old people??!

No Jersey drivers??????!

Has the zombie apocalypse finally arrived?

Who cares?! This will never happen again. Let's just enjoy it!

We enjoyed the open highway for another mile or so until we got to all the construction by the Neshaminy exit that they're still working on after all these years. (Seriously, I think they started that project sometime around when Nixon took us off the gold standard.)

Sure enough, we got stuck behind some schmuck who thinks that being sandwiched between the left median and a Mack truck for a few dozen yards is like the Scylla and Charybdis of the 21^st century.

Somehow, we made it to the Neshaminy exit while there was still some daylight left. (And, I don't just mean daylight for that particular day: What I mean is, it wasn't clear to me that we'd get to our destination before the sun literally burned up the last of its hydrogen and went dark.)

Rockhill Drive is looking just about as moronic these days as Route 1 is down this way: I guess the road crew just decided to stop fighting Braess's paradox, and their new policy is to close a perfectly good on-ramp each and every time they put in an additional and also perfectly good on-ramp...

So, instead of letting the people coming out of the mall or traveling north on Rockhill just continue getting onto Route 1 from the right lane like they always did, PennDOT has bulldozed that option entirely...

...Now, everyone gets to sit there with their thumbs up their asses and wait to make a left so they can take this dippity-doo long way instead...

Lame.

Also, that corner has looked trashy since before I was even born. But they actually found a way to make it look even worse.

My ongoing commentary on the matter prompted Athennia to ask if I wanted to see what all the construction looked like from underneath.

Well, we had our hot lunches in the car with us by this point; but sure, why not?

So, we backtracked down through Langhorne and Penndel onto Business Route 1 (also called Lincoln Highway, because there's nothing quite so imbecilic as giving the same road two, or three, or four different names—especially if you can also assign it a route number or twelve).

This whole stretch of highway that runs along the railroad tracks used to totally weird me out when I was a little kid—and that was even before the vegetation became sentient and turned itself into an enormous brontosaurus head...

Luckily, Jesus was here to save us—not only from the brontosaurus, but also from the shackles of our wanton lust...

I was going to ask Jesus if he had any moving boxes we could bum off him. And, he hadn't mentioned anything about meeting him at the front entrance so he could lead us through the sprawling campus to the de-lusting station; so, I assumed the myriad of highway cones funneling us into the cattle chute would lead us straight to it.

But, the longer we drove, the surer I became that we were just going to pop out onto Bristol Road and be doomed to continue our lives of debauchery...

And then, yep; here we were: Bristol Road.

Oh, joy.

This little slice of utopia is called Oakford—like it matters. As long as I've been alive, the whole area has more or less looked like a six-year-old kid's reimagining of what Hiroshima might have looked like after it got flashboiled by Little Boy...

But, for all the dumbass things the powers that be have done (or not done) around here over the past decade, the roundabout at Bridgetown Pike and Maple Avenue was one that I had been sure would be the among the worst of the worst...

And, yeah... 99% of the time we come through here, we're stuck behind some assclown who's never navigated a roundabout before; so, my greatest fear did indeed come true.

But, while that's a painful experience that probably kills a few of my brain cells each time it happens, it's still faster than sitting at the traffic light that used to be here; so, I've actually come to think of this roundabout as a win.

We made it the rest of the way back to Morrisville without anything noteworthy occurring, and then this Jersey douche blatantly cut us off so he could make the light at Woolston and Trenton Avenue.

L'il Jersey Boy followed us all the way to McDonald's (although I'm pretty sure he had already been planning to go there anyway, because he didn't get out of his car despite having ample opportunity to do so as we sat in the drive-thru).

At long last, we arrived home with lunch. It felt like we had been gone for weeks, but the Qdoba bowls were still fresh and delicious... and, I guess the McDonald's tasted like... well, McDonald's.

"The face of a McDonald's customer, questioning her life choices."

Hey! Not bad. Very convincing, actually.

Athennia hadn't slept well the past couple nights; so, after lunch, she asked if I minded if she napped for a few hours.

Some time later, I got up from my desk to get a glass of water and found two kittens asleep in the bed...

I let them sleep until late afternoon; and then as dinnertime rolled around, we realized we didn't really have a plan.

But... it's not like we've spent any crazy money in a while; have we?

We deliberated for about 14 seconds, and—

We'd just order pizza from Bambino's, and bam! Problem solved.

Obviously, we'd spend the extra $4 on zeppoli for dessert as well. (That's precisely the kind of thing one does when one is shackled by lust, as you know.)

Tuesday afternoon, our realtor Angel called me to ask if I was able to fill out an open-records Right-to-Know request with Richmond Township to get copies of the approved permits for the existing septic system, well, driveway, and shed on the Kutztown property.

(Angel was on his way to pick up his sick son at school; and he said he could fill out the paperwork tomorrow morning unless I wanted to do it now to try to get it in sooner.)

Sure. No prob.

This is, after all, the government we're dealing with: They may move like Sonic the Hedgehog when they want something from you; but, when you need something from them, their top speed tends to rival that of molasses in January...

Might as well get the request in ASAP and give them as much time as we possibly can to rub their three collective brain cells together to make a fourth with which to fulfill our request.

Of course, even though we allegedly have a "right to know" all the ways they're f*cking us at every moment of our lives, we apparently do not have the right to obtain the official form for doing so as a user-friendly PDF with actual text fields, checkboxes, and other controls that behave like the interactive form fields they resemble.

No. All you get from the county website is some crappy scan of a paper form—which, I guess, most people would be stuck printing out, filling in by hand, re-scanning back into digital form, and emailing back.

Fortunately, GIMP lets you work with PDFs as raw graphics; so, I was able to superimpose the relevant text onto the appropriate areas, resave the file as a new PDF, and voila!

The township got the last laugh though: Despite insisting that they had five full business days to respond to my request, they actually got back to me in about 57 minutes...

...Tto tell me that my request had been DENIED.

Denied?

For what?

Did I miss the memo where records of permits for utilities on vacant land are top secret G-14 classified documents now?

But, no. The township insisted they simply don't have any such documents on file. (And, instead of saying that like a normal human, some pencil-pusher there opted instead for, "DENIED, SCUM!")

Anyway...

I went ahead and submitted a request at the county level instead. Counties are bigger than townships; so, I'm sure the Berkoffs—

—will take their full five-business-day holding period, even though my request will probably take them all 13 seconds to fulfill.

Later that evening, Athennia and I watched the first episode of Grimm.

(We finished watching Lucifer back on the 1^st, but that bit of news didn't make it to the blog, what with us being so busy raiding train clubs and such so far this month.)

Wednesday and Thursday were pretty tame—although we made a pizza for dinner Thursday night, and I tried my luck at getting some pictures of Riley.

That went pretty much just as you'd expect by now...

Friday was yet another big day of not hearing back from the Berkoffs.

We'd planned to make tacos for dinner; and, once I had the onions and a couple pounds of ground beef browning on the stove, I had the forethought that Riley and I should probably empty the cat litter and lug it out to the dumpsters now (we usually do it on Sundays) in case the entire weekend ends up being as soggy as the weather goons are insisting.

When we tossed the trashbags and turned around to walk back, we got treated to this awesomely gruesome little cloudscape—and luckily, Riley had her phone on her and let me snap a pic...

Athennia and I watched three more episodes of Grimm before bed; but, at this point, I'm just looking forward to finally being able to give her the birthday presents I've had hidden away for two months now.

24 hours and counting! :)