Traffic jam, when you're already late

On my way home today, I decided to take one of my normal alternate routes home. This route allows me to go straight through the last stoplight I face en route, rather than having to turn left at the light. Normally, this tends to be a less frustrating and more efficient route. Save tonight.

Without any kind of warning--either prior to today nor on the approach--the intersection was completely closed tonight. Now, this was strange, as the cross street is a fairly major street in the area; and the closure had it completely shut down. Not sure what happened, but no detours were marked nor was traffic being directed elsewhere.

So, I did a partial u-turn and then turned on a parallel running street to get around the intersection and hopefully through it. This put me behind a rather frustrating driver, who stopped at each cross-street we passed (whether/not they had a stop sign or a car waiting to cross the intersection) to find out that they were all blocked. After 5-6 intersections in this fashion, I decided to back-track to my original route to get home (figuring it would be much more likely to maintain my sanity by not continuing remain behind the wayward driver).

And rather ironically: it was my original route--that I deviated from--that ended up being the faster. Course, I arrived home to find that the landscapers at the building had decimated the plants on the property, pruning off about half their mass. Which subsequently led to a rather strained and unhappy-customer call to said landscapers... ah such fun.


Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up in your face