The Cringetastic 5

Sara's first blog was about a few of her favorite things, and I'll forgive her for not mentioning me, assuming that the oversight was due to me being a person and not a thing. As nice as her list is, I'm forced to make my post a little more pessimistic, just to keep this blog from being too cheerful, so instead I'm going to list a few of my least favorite things, here goes:

1. This lady, her name is Veronica, and she cut me off earlier today while she was cutting across 5 lanes of traffic to make her exit onto VA-28 off of I-66 today. I followed her to write down her license plate and take this picture, another mile down the road she started veering off onto the shoulder because she was text messaging her friend, probably something terribly urgent and illegible such as "omg do u c z hot guy ovr der"

Okay, I don't actually know this lady, I just stole the picture, but I'm so sick of cell phone users driving slow, veering off the road, and generally just driving like a moron. And that's before they start texting their friends. It makes me want to put a cell signal jammer in my car to produce a pocket of safe-driving around my precious cargo - me.

2. California Pizza Kitchen - I used to like this place till Sara and I went there about 8 months ago and both ordered something other than the BBQ Chicken pizza. I don't remember what we ordered, I think Sara went with the "Food Items That Should Never Be On A Pizza" pizza and I had the "Partially Digested Taco Bell Bile" pizza. They were so bad we didn't finish either of them. The naturally bad selection of toppings might have tasted better if the restaurant hadn't smelled like an outhouse that night, but I doubt it. And if you're thinking that one bad outing shouldn't land the place on this list, well they deserve to be here just for making other companies think that things like eggplant are good pizza toppings.

3. Crowded gyms - I enjoy the feeling of having just worked out, but pretty much every second from the time I decide I'm going to the gym right up until I'm done working out is annoying to me these days. Almost all of that annoyance has to do with people being too close to me at the gym, having to wait for equipment, and/or just having to look at other fat people like me trying to work out. I think that gyms should be forced to let you cancel your contract if you feel that it's become too crowded. They'll never do it though, so instead I'm forced to try to find the gym that is about to go out of business but still has nice equipment or join a gym that just opened and tell everyone that takes a tour that the place is a waste of money.

4. And speaking of contracts, I hate cell phone companies, all of them. After Sara and I got married we decided to be on the same cell phone network to share minutes, since most of my minutes are used talking to her anyway. Problem was, she was in a two-year contract and I was month-to-month, so ipso-facto, I'm now in a 2-year commitment with a company that is so demanding that they disable your phone's multimedia sharing features so you have to buy everything from them. I don't remember committing any crimes, so why have I been sentenced to two years with a cell phone provider I have no experience and/or confidence in? I want the 1 year commitments back, or how about the ability to sign up for a normal plan on a month-to-month basis like every other utility?

5. Hummus - I realize that many of you probably like this stuff, but I'm not particularly fond of it. Supposedly this stuff is made from chickpeas and other ingredients, but whatever it's made out of it all it reminds me of is cat vomit. Now, I'm sure everyone is going to tell me to just try it, it's delicious, but listen, I have tried it, and it wasn't delicious, it wasn't as bad as I imagine cat vomit to be, but it wasn't something I'd seek out at a... well anywhere. The other reason I don't trust hummus is that I can't figure out where this hummus phenomenon came from, it's like one night I went to bed and nobody had heard of it, and the next day everybody is offering it to me. I'm sure that it's some kind of cult, somehow tied into carpet cleaning or as soap-selling pyramid scheme, maybe both. Sure, laugh laugh at me now, but 6 years from now, when you're a hummus addict and find that you can't stop shampooing your carpets with your over-priced mail-order hummus soaps, you'll wish you heeded my warning.