Things that annoy me

My buddy Cyn had a good post the other day called "20 things that suck more than last night's loss." I'm stealing her idea.

I have been in a particularly feisty mood of late - perhaps stemming from the fact that I had to work Saturday because of Parents' Weekend - so here are things that really annoy me (in no particular order):

• People who snap their gum when they chew it
• Men who leave their hats on in a restaurant
• People who have forgotten how to use their car's turn signal
• People who try to drive and have an animated discussion on their phone
• People who wait until the last minute to merge into traffic
• The price of airline tickets
• Feeling like I have to be a WW role model all the time
• Feeling like I have to be a role model in front of my students all the time
• The start of the new fall television season coinciding with the end of baseball season and playoffs (you can only record so many things at once)
• My Comcast DSL
• Fox Sports
• Tim McCarver
• Joe Buck
• Smart asses
• The GOP
• Dumb asses
• People voting based on exteriors - just because Palin's a woman or Obama is African American - VOTE SMART, people - delve into the issues!
• Dumb asses who write editorials in our local paper. Latest example: the woman who wrote in to support Palin, saying that McCain demonstrated his respect for women by choosing her and how we should all respect women. She closes with "Gov. Sarah Palin is my kind of girl." Kind of undermines the point, doesn't it??
• Living in a Red State
• Hypocrites
• The New York Yankees
• Yankee Fans
• The Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays
• Rays fans
• The Red Sox losing

On a more positive note! Ellen Goodman had a great column in Friday's Boston Globe (which was reprinted here today with a different title: "Women, Palin and the Vote"). She discusses the difficulties Democratic women are having with Palin's candidacy. Her last paragraph is particularly powerful:

After all, Palin may yet be the fulfillment of an old feminist prophecy that Texan Sissy Farenthold once described with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek. We will have achieved equality the day mediocre women take their place beside mediocre men.

Amen, sister.