driving problems

I secretly take a little bit of joy in letting my manual transmission car roll backwards just a tiny bit when people pull up too close behind me on a hill.

Does that make me a bad person? 

Even if you are in a hurry, it is a good idea to be kind to other drivers.

Which is possibly the opposite of what I am doing by letting my car roll back. But I'm not doing it to hit them (I have never hit them), just to remind them that some of us have manual transmission cars, and on especially steep hills, we need a little more space. I think people forget that manual transmission cars still exist. 

WE EXIST, PEOPLE.

...

A couple of times lately I have thought there was something wrong with my headlights. It would be annoying if I had to replace yet another headlight.

I feel like I forgot to turn my headlights on, but I look and look at the road before me and there are two widening Vs of light, so it can't be my car.

Why is it so dark?

It turns out that the power has been going off every time it rains, in different parts of town, which in the Pacific Northwest is a problem. It rains a lot here, you see. 

(Weirdly, Universe City gets 13 inches of rain per year more than Gone West, possibly proving my ancient theory that it rains more often in Gone West but not as hard. Gone West drizzles. Universe City pours. I needed an umbrella much more in Universe City.)

And still, every time it actually rains (v. drizzling), both towns fall apart. This would be like the Mitten falling apart every time it snowed, ONLY WORSE because it rains 9 months out of the year here. The drains fill up. The electricity goes out.

It is unnerving to be at a major intersection in a major city with no traffic signal. In Liberia, where the traffic lights haven't worked in years, everyone seems to just figure it out. Here, people are so dependent on the lights that they stutter forward hesitantly at the intersections so that I want to open my window and say, "Yes, it's your turn. Yes, all three of you who are headed east. All three of you go at once, and then those of us headed north and south will go at the same time, see?"

That said, I almost ran an intersection completely because it was so dark that I didn't even realize I'd already come to it.