When, if ever, do you honk at drivers? And have you ever sent food back?

I wouldn't order steak at such places. Those sorts of places you order the basic stuff. To be honest when I get steak, I usually get the really good expensive cuts - I wouldn't get these at an Applebees or the like. And often I have my husband grill it - really the best way - and buy it from our butcher. The only problem with that is if hubby overcooks I don't have the option of sending it back.

The times I have sent back food was when I found some items which did not belong in the food.
Broken china - that was in Boston - got excuses and a new plate of food and did not even have to pay for it.
A piece of metal - that was in Germany -no excuse and was told that is to be expected when I order grilled food.
A tooth filling in a roll - that was in Sweden - went to the dentist who then said it was not mine......
I have a tendency to find things in food both alive and dead.

If someone seems to have dozed off at the light, I give them a light horn toot. I don't recall it not working and having to hit the horn harder.

I was in Charlotte a few weeks ago where we lived for 20 years and I was struck by how slow everyone seemed to be driving.

In Dallas, everyone drives like they're in the NASCAR circuit...unless they are Mexicans driving a commercial vehicle or crusty old geezers in dilapidated pick-ups.

I figure the former may be illegal and don't want to risk getting stopped by a cop, but going the minimum on a Texas highway is sure to draw attention, so who knows. Maybe they just learned to drive and are scared.

The latter usually drive in the left lane and you can just hear them thinking "I'm going the speed limit, damn it you can just get stuffed!"

I will honk loudly at people who do stupid and dangerous things like driving straight across from the left most of two left turn lanes. Never occurs to me that they might be packing.

I don't send anything back, ever. Not worth the risk. I just won't come back if it's bad enough to require a return.

Well, you could always grill it yourself

"Cause you're so hot, Mame, and that's the only chance any of them would have to swap spit with you.

I don't send stuff back much, given my lifetime's disappointing meals in ordinary places or very good places, or even in Jonathan Gold places (I might have been in some of those before him, at least similar). I rarely order good meat in restaurants, hah, now, but I remember the great places. I remember exploding recently at, was it, village inn, when I expected a hamburger and got a pile of sloppo over miserable bun halves. I was rude but accepted it, as I wasn't paying. I ate some of it, and was happy enough for the meal.

Not to be a snarko, I tend to like actual restaurants. I'm no fan of chains in most cases, more of a mom and pop or similar, up to 'serious' ones.

What do you consider a "chain"

Morton's is a chain and so is Ruth's Chris.

Not to mention Del Friscos, Sullivans, Smith & Wollenskys and The Palm

Ever had a bad steak at any of these places?

I remember Ruth's Chris, never been there, though it was in my area., then just one more place. For most of my life, good steak is out of my range, but early on I ate at stockyard inns. However, surprise, I won't argue with you on any of those, re chain chain chain dom. The Palm sounds familiar - not looking it up, I seem to remember rolling my eyes. My memory was that it was later. (I can be proved wrong), but I think it was later to my reading.) I haven't heard of the rest of those.

Trust me, they are "chains," and they serve very, very good meals.

I get that.

I guess I am guilty of this as well. The other day, I am at an intersection with a light, trying desperately to turn left, but with so much on coming traffic I just had to sit and wait until the light turned yellow. So finally the light turns yellow and the car across from me stops (now at this intersection there are two lanes at the light on either side - with a left turn only lane)...so behind this man who stops comes this big SUV swerving and barreling into the left hand lane and as the light turns red speeds through the intersection.

Now had I not be attentive to this craziness, I would likely been turning right into her path. Instead I blare on the horn. I doubt I had to be worried about her packing as the conservative looking soccer mom is driving frantically behind the wheel - couldn't have been desperating trying to make practice as it was 7:30am.

Not an option - no one touches the webber besides the "grill master." That is his toy - that and our new $500 leaf blower.

This is what drives me nuts:

"The next time a traffic jam materializes in front of you for no apparent reason, think about Japan. That’s where scientists have, for the first time, recreated “shockwave” traffic jams, in which one driver’s slowing down creates a ripple effect that moves backwards through traffic, grinding everything to a halt for miles."

It especially happens when you have merge lanes and bridges. You're driving normally then suddenly it's a parking lot. You look ahead and you see people crawling along on the bridge, 5 car lengths behind the guy in front, for no apparent reason. Then you finally get to the bridge and it's clear sailing.

Yeah its called Phantom Traffic Jams. I remember reading about this before - here is one such explanation.

http://aip.org/dbis/stories/2010/20052.html

In Kansas, the courtesy horn toot on green was usually after about 5 seconds.

In Arizona, I quickly learned that has been cut down to about 1 second. I learned to adapt.

My friend calls this "The shoe in the road syndrome"

There's a shoe on the side of the road, or maybe box of kleenex, and before you know it, there's this huge back up.

Actually, all it takes is one person who drove the way my mother did to have this cause all out grid lock.
She would have seen something like the above and slammed on the brakes, slowing to 20 miles an hour, until she could get by this obviously volatile situation.

Got any idea how many leaves you're going to have to blow to make that pay out.

I bet there is some forum out there where someone is whining about their neighbor's leaf blower working 'round the clock, seven days a week.

We have a very large yard with lots of trees and leaves.

Love it - a couple of weekends ago when he first used it, the yard looked beautiful. A day went by and voila more leaves. I don't think the neighbors will complain as since two weeks ago he hasn't pulled it out again - he was sick this weekend so I anticipate seeing it out next Saturday morning.

It looks like a ghost busters type of instrument.

I bought us a snow clearing machine last year, about 10 days too late. We got 2 ft of snow overnight. My husband will rake but refuses to shovel. I am getting older and the back isn't what it used to be, so for $208, I now have a powerful snowblower. It looks like a lawnmower. I only used it twice all winter. But that snowfall - it took us 1 hour to get to the end of the block, with several neighbours helping (and I have snow tires) and another 45 to go another 1/2 block.

For last Christmas I asked for a car starter. Best thing (besides my espresso machine) I ever asked for.

What's a car starter? Surely you haven't been hand cranking it.