What is with the trucks and state troopers at SeaTac?

Yesternight, as I was driving home along Highway 509, I was coming up on a heavy truck laden down with landfill for the new runway. There are hundreds of these trucks every day passing along the final two-mile stretch until 509 terminates in Burien just south of the airport. As I was coming up on the truck, I realized that I was either going to have to slow down a lot, or swing to the left and speed up. I chose the latter and stomped on the gas. I was probably going a bit over the limit when suddenly there were police lights behind me.

Sigh.

But then, the highway patrol swung away from me and got behind the truck. With a feeling of cold relief I finished my maneuver, now made much easier by the rapidly decelerating truck, and got off the highway to head home.

This happens a lot (the troopers pulling over the landfill trucks, not police lights in my rearview mirror). Every time I drive by that stretch of road, there's at least one state trooper SUV and one truck there by the side of the road. And I can't figure out what's going on. It's just really odd.

And it gives me a bit of a nervous feeling when I see just how stealthed-out the trooper SUVs are. They're indistinguishable from civilian SUVs when the police lights aren't on. But they're less frightening than these monster landfill truck-trains, I suppose. I mean, is the private construction company deliberately putting over-weight trucks down there and this is just the cost of doing business, is it a safety inspection, or what?

And I guess what annoys me most is that this is the mechanism by which two parts of our government-- the port authority and the highway patrol-- interact. It's inefficient in the extreme, and it's burning taxpayer money.

The Return of Farmers Elf & Omaha

Well, it is the return of Farmers Elf and Omaha today. After a simple breakfast and the completion of our usual duties, in which I did some laundry and put a new filter into the HEPA fan while Omaha took on the bigger task of cleaning the kitchen, I ran out to Home Depot and picked up four 20-gallon pails. Omaha and I spent the afternoon processing last year's compost and drawing up our action item list for the garden for the year. I finished the sorting and moving of the compost while Omaha mowed the lawn by the access side of the house. I must have moved 400 pounds of dirt-- twice.

Kouryou-chan made her own lunch, with a little help. I asked her to practice making a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, and she did a good job of it-- better with a spoon than a knife. She also made her first mixed drink, a pussyfoot (also known as a Shirley Temple): a shot of grenadine and a can of ginger ale over ice, stir gently. Unfortunately, after lunch she complained that her tummy hurt and Omaha decided to have her lie down. She turned out to have a bit of a fever so she's stuck in bed now with some juice and a short stack of comic books.

I also managed to find the thirteen minutes necessary to watch one episode of Steel Angel Kurumi. It looks to be cute. Nice character designs at any rate, and the theme is one of my favorite-- little lost psycho robot. I might watch more, or I might play some more Half Life 2. I started playing it again last night (have I mentioned how much I hate Steam? "You haven't played in a month. Checking for updates. No, you can't cancel out. No, if you kill the process you can't play.") I finished the driving portion of the game, and now I'm on foot again. I have to say that the part of the adventure under the bridge is quite well done, but I'm annoyed that I have to preserve the car. If I lose the car before I get to the garage, the game is over, even when it's clear I could have finished the trip on foot.