As I was driving down the street yesterday, a car came onto the road from a cross street. I had a green light at that intersection at the time, and the thought occurred to me that he had turned left onto my street on a red light.

With no turn signal.

Every day in this city, millions of turns occur without signals. A thought occurred to me yesterday. Turn signals are so important to safety and traffic flow, that in driver education they teach an emergency protocol for dealing with a broken signal. Most people are at least generally familiar with these hand signals, which are the same used on bikes, snowmobiles, and other vehicles somtimes lacking signals.

And yet, nobody uses them in New Orleans. I’ve long since given up trusting people’s turn signals here, so I don’t know why it still bugs me. Maybe it’s just so ingrained from learning to drive in Michigan.

Be warned: lemon pepper + vegetable stir-fry medley = not nearly as good as you might think

Or maybe you’re not dumb enough to think it would be good. Like me. I defend myself by saying that I was skeptical but adventurous. After all, it was edible, but the good old chinese trinity of soy sauce, sesame oil, and red pepper flakes (vs. lemon juice, lemon zest, black pepper and a little honey) would have been better.

I mean, lemon pepper is great on fish and maybe chicken. Vegetable medley? Uh-uh.

Worked from 7:15 to 21:30 today.

Long day.

Dinner’s almost done, and man am I hungry.

Playing catch-up blows. Almost makes the conference trip not worth it…

but not quite.

I asked Sam (my roommate) this morning why his sausage from the asian market wasn’t refrigerated. Typical Sam response:

You don’t have to refrigerate anything — Chinese people are geniuses!

I think I’ve nearly rid myself of any affinity for Diet Coke. I’ve been avoiding it due to my scare with high blood pressure, and the fact that the only listed nutrient with a nonzero value is sodium.

I bought a bottle today from the machine at work to perk me up a little, as I was feeling a slight afternoon dip in alertness. I only made it halfway through the bottle before I stopped drinking it. Later I tried to make myself drink a bit more (waste not, want not, plus mmmm — caffeine). No dice. I just threw away the bottle with at least 1/4 of the contents.

This is a good thing. I don’t need to be drinking that crap. The less I crave it, the better.