okay, i was right not to open the box until today

My parents?  Sent me the black 80GB iPod with video.

I love you all, but right now, they are the big winners.

[dances]

i'm going to send a motorcade up the Major Deegan

Well, that was an unusually shitty commute. I'm pretty well adjusted to the idea that a lot of people don't go to work on Monday -- never noticed this before, but the traffic is always lighter (by, like, orders of magnitude) on Monday morning, so there it is. (The second-lightest morning is Friday, but it makes up for it by the afternoon rush hour beginning at 11:45.) So I was prepared for today to suck more than yesterday, when the traffic report informed me of an accident on a bridge I normally cross, so I took a slight detour and made it to work in actually record time.

I was not prepared for a 40-minute trip to take me an hour and a quarter.

Some kind of 'cade on the 14th Street bridge -- I don't know what, because I was still back at the point where people sometimes try to get back into the mainline from the HOV lanes, and the fun was up at the spot where the lanes come in from the right -- bunch of buses, it looked like, with a really very numerous escort of motorcycle cops. The prep for this must have been going on for some time, because it had taken me twice as long to get there in the first place as it should have done, even on a non-Monday. And then some PG-County genius keeps deciding it's a good idea to send a crew to do road work on my exit off the Beltway in the morning rush hour. Thanks heaps, guys. (You couldn't wait one more lousy hour? You're normally putting away the cones as I get there, so it's not like it's an all-day job, whatever the hell it is you're doing.)

Still. Could be worse! I could have a job that cares a lot whether I'm there on the dot of ... any time in particular.

ways in which my birthday is awesome

• presents, including good ones from my folks (and more to come, because my father tells me things shipped in two packages)
  
• tax refund check arrived (w00t!)
  
• the weather is gorgeous today (despite the high pollen count)
  
• lunch out with wordplay and ellen_fremedon (zomg FULL OF FOOD)
  
• money does, apparently, grow on trees/from the ground/etc. -- found a random $3 in the parking lot on the way back from lunch (three twenties would have been nice, but three singles is better than a poke in the eye)
  
• Jerry Falwell has died (sympathy for those who are grieving, but I'm not at all sorry he's gone)
  • Okay, but, this WaPo article attributes to Jerry the following quote: "I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved[.]" Evolved, y'all -- are you listening, Intelligent Designers? -- and I can't even give props to the staff writer and editor on this one.

And it's not even 3:00!