<p>Another irksome issue:
A person who asks you questions (direct, personal or what have you) and you answer them., but when you ask them a question they don’t answer you-- they give a vague, non committal response, if any</p>
<p>Seedless watermelons. They have no flavor, are round instead of oval and have overtaken my favorite supermarket. I presume they were developed for consumers irked by their friends who spit out watermelon seeds.</p>
<p>People who bring children, small or big, anywhere when they haven’t properly trained them. Parents who threaten their children, usually loudly and in a whining voice, never follow through, and then wonder why said children are completely disrespectful and don’t obey.</p>
<p>People who zoom through parking lots at 40 or 50 mph.</p>
<p>People who toss out their cigarette butts while driving along. Any time of year (even when the fire danger is not high), it is still littering.</p>
<p>Try living in the #2 cigarette smoking state and having 3/4 mile of your yard along the state highway. It’s disgusting–they throw out not only the butts, but also the empty packs, along with their beer cans and bottles. I think it goes back to my earlier post–lack of parental training in the early years. sigh…</p>
<p>Work irk:</p>
<p>People who e-mail you asking them to call you, but don’t leave a contact number anywhere in the e-mail. You have to spend the next 5 minutes looking up the number, hopefully in a previous e-mail.</p>
<p>There’s a little tool in Outlook called the “signature block”. Automatically places your signature block in every e-mail from you. Pretty simple to add your phone number(s). Learn to use it…</p>
<p>Bicyclists riding side by side on narrow two lane roads with vertical and horizontal curves, being put on hold by your child who takes another call from a friend, texting during family meal, complaints about minor household chores as I scrounge for funds to pay first semester tuition, people with no sense of humor, people without my sense of humor - but, you know me, I can’t complain. :)</p>
<p>I like to run in a nearby park that has a nice paved trail. This is what bugged me today (and most days):</p>
<p>Walkers who walk 4 abreast across the trail. No one can get by them without going off the trail and risking a fall on the gravel shoulder. Why can’t they double up when they see someone coming? Cyclists on the same trail, with their silent stealth bikes, who don’t yell out when they’re approaching? This way I could be sure I wouldn’t innocently veer into your oncoming path. Dog walkers with retractable leashes. When Spot, Fido and Rover all meet up on the trail, its a tangled mess of leashes. Please retract that leash, so that above-mentioned runners, walkers, and cyclists can get by without tripping over leashes and dogs.</p>
<p>The latest car commercial that uses a light, airy version of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Burning For You” as the background music, complete with a female singer doing her best imitation of Lisa Loeb. Stop ruining my “sign along at the top of my lungs while driving or playing air-guitar” music!</p>
<p>What’s next? A BeautyRest mattress commercial with Jessica Simpson signing a jazz version of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”?</p>
<p>When the USB box and TV get out of sync. Whatever happened to the days when you could just change a channel and turn a set on and off like a normal person?!</p>
<p>People who park in a busy lot and leave their pickup tailgate down. Grrrrrrrr.</p>
<p>In heavy stop-and-go traffic, drivers hold their cigarettes out their window. If you want to smoke, keep your hand, your cigarette and the smoke in your car. I don’t want to inhale it, smell it or have it come though my air intake system. </p>
<p>A close second-- skiiers who smoke on the slopes or chair lifts or lift lines. Its fresh air. Leave it that way.</p>
<p>People who wear their pajamas and slippers out in public!</p>
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<p>Never have seen anyone smoke on the chair lift or in line. I do see smokers outside the lodge though. I did see an instructor ski down a green trail with a baby (assume it was hers) in her arms once. If you ski you know that being a great skier does not preclude someone else from skiing or boarding into you. I was surprised she was allowed to carry the baby up on the lift.</p>
<p>^she intimidated everyone by nursing the child. It’s an old ski-instructor trick.</p>
<p>You are fortunate, mamom. I’ve had the misfortune to be on several chairlifts behind… well its usually snowboarders, who light up (cigarettes, not weed) and then we have to go through their smoke all the way up the mountain. Its a little easier to say something to someone in the liftline. The worst liftline offenders were in NC. Fortunately we havent skiied there in a long time.</p>
<p>Finding the perfect product (i.e. eye make-up remover, healthy fast food that I like, etc.) and using it just long enough to realize there’s no match out there, then discovering it’s been discontinued!</p>
<p>People who engage in long, loud conversations in tight, enclosed places (such as on a plane flight) thereby forcing everyone around them to listen. </p>
<p>What’s worse is sitting next to some stranger on a plane who apparently can’t see I’m trying to read or sleep and keeps trying to engage me in a loud, long conversation. I don’t mind a few pleasantries, especially near the beginning or end of a flight, but three or four hours to nodding and responding to some stranger and trying to disengage without being impolite is not what I had in mind when I purchased the ticket.</p>
<p>coureur, I have one word for you: iPod. Living here in NY, oops, excuse me, NYCITY, it is a necessary defense. </p>
<p>Here are some city irks:
People who make no attempt not to stab you in the eye with their open umbrella as they walk by you on a crowded city sidewalk. Usually committed by short women. (And I’m one too, so they aim right at me.)</p>
<p>People who walk in front of you into a crowded elevator, subway car, whatever, then stop dead center at the doorway while they figure out where they want to situate themselves.</p>
<p>Everywhere irk: Guys who tell me to “smile!”</p>