2ndclepunkbuddha

Started driving for Lyft after the hilarious fiasco with Uber a few weeks ago.  Now I shall be able to further entertain the masses with human encounters and a means of paying bills.  I signed on with the competitor, Lyft, and I am much happier with it.  In terms of being a driver, there is more hand holding and courtesy that they show their drivers, and riders seem to agree the same way.  This is not, however, a blog about the shortcomings of Uber verses the good of Lyft as the superior, because each is what it is.  So I digress. There is no difference in the experiences you will have whether you are Lyft or Uber driving, save for the volume of riders.  As we speak, in this or any other city, there are my Uber drivers than there are Lyft drivers.  They say that is changing, as those on the West Coast are utilizing Lyft more that they are Uber and the feelings seem to be changing nationwide about the two.  Peak times are no different, as one wou...

As I just started driving for Uber, I decided that another good time to do some driving is to get my feet wet on a weeknight with an event.  There was a professional basketball game in the city, one of the events that will prompt many a rider customer.  So I figured I would head into the city once again and see where the Uber app took me.  After a quick pit stop in Tremont killing a bit of time before the game ended, once again, you never know where or how this app is going to apply to you or where you will go but must remember to embrace every situation, keep a certain distance between you and the other person, and go forth. Surprisingly on this night, I did not end up picking up a lot of people I was taking from the game (home, a hotel, a bar, etc.).  Instead I gave two rides to those who attended the game, another few in between bars, and then over to one of my city's establishments in the rock community, The Agora Theater.  Since when do attendees of rock ...

People had been telling me to do it for a while, it was a way of making extra money.  And we all certainly need money in this day and age, quite honestly ANYTHING to make a buck.  I was a bit wary about it, but then realize it was really nothing.  We all were wary with the advent of the Internet and the prospect of meeting people whose last name you don't even know for business or personal reasons.  Like everything else with changes, we get past them and we adapt to these changes and it becomes commonplace.  We seem to escalate in terms of these changes, when at first meeting someone for said business or personal reasons in public places to that of bringing them into our homes.  The next step is to provide something for others that we wouldn't otherwise.  This is a range of things, sordid and not so sordid.  Still, there will always be the feeling of caution, a natural reaction, feeling unsure about what is or isn't about to happen.  It was w...

Last Saturday, I was sitting in a bar on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights eagerly anticipating the arrival of one of my heroes from the Grunge Years.  I realize how ridiculous that sounds, I am a 41 year old woman living a hand to mouth existence, rather modestly when I was once so high on the hog, but I think a lot of us are in said situations now in terms of finance as well as in other ways.  It is in the other ways that I continue to be modest and make further adjustments, but that's another story for another day.  He came in the room without entourage or announcement, and I realized as he walked by me "That's him!"  I was nervous to meet him, as I was twenty one years ago when we first met, but he wouldn't remember that.  It was in South Bend, Indiana, where I was attending college the first time around, at a little clubhouse building dubbed Dalloway's which took the form of a modest coffee shop from time to time.  My college radio station, WVFI 640 A...

During my entrapment at CSU in the last few years, I took a class called the Sociology of Poverty.  This class was a source of much oddity, where the antics of fellow classmates and the disorganization of the professor were the sources of much hilarity.  The professor had once been a social worker who told us many a tale of her years working Intake, as anyone in the social work field will tell of their jobs.  I am not one of those people who takes in such sayings as "the culture of poverty" or even buys it to begin with, but one day I decided to ask a question before the class.  I am far too seasoned in the world to be at all idealistic or liberal anymore.  I asked the professor I hope this doesn't come off the wrong way but it could very easily, but I am asking this question because I have honestly been struggling with this, and that question is that if you want us, the students in this class, to take away one thing from this experience, what is that one thing?...

Many people in life, myself included, have missed out on opportunities.  Sometimes it was a scheduling conflict, a transportation issue, or a demand from another party that stopped us from doing something we really wanted to do.  Some of the thing we miss out on are trivial, some a serious, and many are somewhere in between.  A person who chronically does this is a person who does not wish to socialize and also criticize those who want to do social things.  Essentially, this is what the person "does for a living": In that they choose not to have a social life and rip apart the self esteem of others around them.  They find fault or reason as to how and why someone should not do something, it's a waste of time, it's ridiculous, it's boring, etc.  All or some of these observations may be true, but the ultimate problem is that the one who constantly does this is setting themselves up for a lifetime of regrets.  No one regrets that they took that crazy trip...

I always thought that bottled water was the biggest rip off of the 20th century, second only to indoor tanning beds.  Every person on earth would get it for free and suddenly we were paying for it, a tactic of marketing.  For the success of the marketers, I give them credit, but it was hardly an industry that was brand new or created just recently.  Of course the eco terrorists are still telling us how much additional plastic waste it creates, and I think that every time I take out the trash.  Since ancient times people have transported water from other geographic areas, it seems in the 90s sales all of a sudden quadrupled and we were sporting them everywhere we went, spring and purified tap water remain the best sellers in a billion dollar industry.  It remains the world's most precious resource.  And I gave it to him the last time I saw him. It was not a particularly strange day, not much if anything had happened of note.  The phone rang, he said h...