Pretty much how I feel today

So this morning is the first day of school -- fraught with rushing around, figuring out how to dress-to-impress, making sure we have the needed supplies (either a parking tag for the teenager or the right amount of Kleenex® for the sixth-grader), getting out the door on time.

THEN...we have a visit from the P.O.T.U.S. who completely shuts down traffic all around Kansas City — completely normal and expected for a Presidential visit, but just a little inconvenient on the first day of school when things are a mess anyway.

But the proverbial camel's-back-breaking straw was when the illustrious Missouri Department of Transportation, in all their infinite wisdom, decided to take advantage of this gorgeous mess of a day in order to conduct bridge-painting on I-670, shutting down two MORE lanes of traffic in addition to the mess we already had on our hands. Now, far be it from me to ask the daring questions like "why today?" or "why not overnight instead of during rush hour?"

It does seem like MoDOT does occasionally trip all over themselves when working on projects. They schedule many simultaneous projects at various corners of Kansas City and the suburbs, which taken singly are not a problem but when glommed atop each other cause major headaches for the very commuters they're trying to serve. Nobody has yet figured out their methods for determining why an entire city must be shut down in order to paint a bridge, but the mystery continues almost every spring and summer. I can picture it...Sicily, 1948..."hey guys, let's do ALL our projects in the same month! That will make us look busy, like we're really spending taxpayer dollars effectivetly!" "Yeah, don't spread those projects out, why not do them in one WEEK instead of a month? Better bang for the buck..."

Conclusion: It seemed only fitting that Dan saw the "gasping Mr. Bill inside a plastic bag" face stenciled on some Dell laptop packaging this morning. This was too hilarious not to shoot a pic of and post. It perfectly describes how most of us are feeling today, after the battle we faced trying to get to work. Thanks, MoDOT, for your ineptness. Feel free to start other random projects on horrible days, we really don't mind! :)