For various reasons, some stupid, some frustrating, and none of which I should have worried about that late at night, I stayed up waaay too late last night. And then couldn’t get to sleep for about 45 minutes after going to bed.

So I went to Starbucks on the way to work. The woman at the cash register wrote my name down as “KALSLN” despite the fact that I spelled it out loud to her. I suppose I should be grateful she got more than half the letters right. I’m always amazed at the new and surprising ways people find to misspell my name, though. If I’d been more awake, I would have added my usual “like Nelson with a K.” Of course, if I’d been more awake, I wouldn’t have stopped for coffee.

The rest of the drive was uneventful until I was ready to get off the freeway. Remember The Turn Signal Is Your Friend? Here’s another one. There was a pack of cars in the right lane, all about three carlengths apart, and I needed to get over to reach my exit. Unfortunately the gap I picked was in front of a Mercedes, who refused to open the gap at all. So this guy is tailgating me, barely a carlength behind, at 65 MPH. Last I looked, stopping distance at that speed was a whole lot longer than that. We reach the ramp to the next freeway, which is a cloverleaf, and my blueberry muffin rolls out of its bag onto the seat, spilling crumbs everywhere. Now, at this point I have to get over one lane immediately in order to be able to turn left at the real exit, but there’s a huge truck in that lane. So I pass the truck, start signalling, start to move over – and this jerk (who has never dropped more than a single car length behind me the entire time) not only zooms into the next lane and starts to pass me, but starts honking at me. Note that I started signalling before he passed me! I slam on the brakes (which, if he’d still been behind me, would have guaranteed a collision) and honk the horn, and the muffin (which I’d fortunately rolled back into its bag) rolls forward, hits the underside of the dashboard and lands on the floor.

To top it all off, a construction crew was blocking the left turn lane, so I may as well have stayed in the right lane.

Here’s hoping the day gets better and not worse…