Allan

North Korea‘s Kim Jung Un is apparently having a ceremony marking the dismantlement of one of their nuclear weapons facilities.  USA Today  Now there’s a reason to have a party.  He comes up with all the good ideas.  Now why didn’t I think of this.  Probably because I don’t have any nuclear weapons.  Facebook

Something else hitting the headlines is parking lines in the downtown core of Lethbridge, Alberta.  Yes, painting lines on the pavement – to assist with parking.  But not just any lines.  They’re perpendicular lines, not angled lines.  Now I know what you’re thinking – this is big.  And rightfully so.  No word on if they’ll follow civil guidelines and use white or if they’ll cheap-out and use orange like the WalMart / The Home Depot parking lot in Lethbridge.  There they used orange to separate two lanes going in the same direction.  Like a hand-painted stop sign – you just know it’s not a civil project.

They’re also adding one hundred seventy parking kiosks downtown.  No, not as big as the parking lines, but exciting just the same.

The next newsworthy article is a bit misleading. Horse owner calls for introduction of safeguards to prevent slaughtering without consent  Well, if I were in this, I’d want to have a horse’s consent, too.  To do otherwise would be unfair.

This is not something that made it into the news mainstream today.  I was riding my bike northbound on the designated bike street adjacent Mayor Magrath Drive South when a guy and his friend told me to ride on the street.  I apparently scared him.  …  He could see me coming for about a block away but told me “a guy on a bike barrelling down on me” scared him.  I said “sorry” and rode by.  Then he offered that I should ride on the street.  <sigh>  I 180ed to go talk with him (which surprised him again, I supposed).  I told him that there are signs posted all along MMDS stating no bicycles are allowed and that this, in fact, was the designated bicycle street.  In fact they’ve been there for so long that they’re faded and hard to even see anymore.  It’s always been this way.  It’s a shared-use thing.  He apologized for the misunderstanding stating that he wasn’t from around here.  I was, at that point, tongue-tied.  Too many things to say.  1) you’re in a new environment; don’t tell people how to behave or you’ll look like a damned fool; 2) if you’re new, read the signs; 3) I didn’t mean to scare you, but … I really scared you?  How old are you?  You’ve lived this long and not died of a heart attack? 4) to avoid problems, don’t stand in the center of a “sidewalk” if you see someone coming – bicycle, pedestrian, horse running away from a slaughterhouse, Kim Jung Un’s nuclear-powered trucks – anything – just move to the right of the sidewalk so as to let both oncoming parties pass.  Has the whole world gone mad?

But this did make it.