A few pre-weekend observations

You probably haven't heard Peter Gabriel's strange album OVO: The Millennium Show Soundtrack. It don't even think that it's available in the US.

As far as Peter Gabriel goes, it's pretty uneven. For reasons unknown he employs other vocalists to sing most of the male parts in all the songs. Pardon the sports-related analogy, but isn't that like bringing in Brian Skinner to shoot free-throws when Peja Stojakovic is available?

Nonetheless, there's some stunningly beautiful music here. And true to Gabriel form it's thick -- full of layers.

Take for example the song, "Make Tomorrow".

I love the first verse of this song, which seems to be about renewing love in a marriage.


Put on the dress in which you were married
Pull down the veil til your eyes are hid
Can you remember where we both came from
Let us do as we did

So many days since I was with you
So many nights I've slept alone
So many barriers grown in between us
Let us be as we were once


*snif*

---

In other news...

I narrowly avoided dying yesterday, twice.

The first instance came in my company's restroom. Like all living humans must do, I was doing my duty in a stall and I happened to glance up at the latch.

"That's an odd angle for the latch to be at," I mused and thought nothing more of it.

It was only after I was done that I realized that the reason for the latch's odd angle was that I had forgot to lock the darn thing! If someone had opened the door on me I would've literally died like the witch in the wizard of OZ. I would've melted into the floor screaming, leaving a huge problem for HR to explain.

I'm very grateful to God that he saw fit to not include that sort of death in my destiny. And that he kept anyone from opening the door on me.

My second brush with death came on the ride home.

There was some road work going on and the traffic workers had us stopped to wait our turn to go. Pretty standard stuff so I didn't think anything about it and soon they flipped the "Stop" sign to "Slow" and motioned for us to go.

I was only as I neared the other end of the traffic control zone that something seemed amiss. The guy or girl at the other end usually regards the traffic exiting the construction zone with a cool disinterest but now this wasn't the case. This guy with an orange vest was almost dancing with excitement and making frantic motions pointing to the other lane.

"weird," I thought. "Do they want us to slow down?"

I would've left it at that but then I noticed the large pickup truck headed straight for me, in my lane. Then it clicked: The dorks had directed us into oncoming traffic. Crud.

I had to pull an action-movie-esque maneuver (at least it felt like it) into the other lane and the oncoming pickup had to slam on his breaks and pull onto the shoulder. All the while I'm sure the road worker had a look on his face like, "Aye caramba! Why did I set this up like this?"

Anyway, I'm happy to be alive and, Cal-Trans, next time please think a little bit before you almost kill your customers.