Friday morning, on my way to work, I stopped by Dunkin Donuts to grab my usual 2 donuts (chocolate-frosted cake and a coffee roll for $2.04). As I'm entering the parking lot and Gwen Stefani's Sweet Escape (Dude!) is on the radio, the car in front of me--for whatever reason--decides he wants to back up into the space they've found. So, in the process of backing up, he is blocking (I'd describe it as "inadvertently", but I'm not sure it wasn't intended)... he's blocking all traffic flow, so I patiently wait for him to get out of the way and park.
While waiting for the guy to get into the spot, the car behind me gets impatient and decides to pull around next to me. When the car in front has backed in enough to clear the opposite direction of traffic flow, the car now on my left (no longer behind me) shoots through the newly created opening (luckily there weren't any cars there; and amazingly no double-parked cars), snaking ahead of me. So, I wait the 5 more seconds it takes for the back-up guy to get into his spot, and then park right next to the 'snaker'.
We both get out of our cars, and begin walking into the store, bypassing the walk-up line and both at a rather brisk pace--I didn't gain any on the couple (she was driving; he was the passenger) that emerged from the car. So I enter the store and get in line behind them--which I was ok with. There were two people in line ahead of the couple and myself, occupying both registers and order-takers.
Now, because I frequent said Dunkin probably too often, and have been semi-regular in my morning stop-ins for probably a year now, some of the workers know what I get. One of them happened to be working that morning, and as she was finishing up with the person she had at her register, she pulled my order and bagged it. This made it so that right as both registers cleared (at the same time) and the snakers went to begin ordering, I was paid (the worker had already rung up my order) and out the door....
The karma-tic icing: not only did I leave the parking lot before the snakers left the store, but I passed them in the line to pay right as they were starting to order. ;-)
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
In my book (Midnight's Children), at the moment the developing arch nemesis/pseudo-twin of the main character (Saleem Sinai), is named Shiva. In the book, Shiva is mentioned as the Hindu god of destruction (that's him dancing at left) which matches the personality of the (currently) ten-year-old boy in the story with the name.
