A few crazy Roadside Sightings of late:

1. Thursday, 10:42 pm, Magoun Square, Somerville -- after dropping a friend off at the curb, Nat & I are waiting for the light to turn green when a traffic coup occurs. There are three sets of lights at this typically baroque Boston intersection, one ahead of us, one perpendicular to us (on Broadway) and a third one that goes sort of diagonally across, basically to let people in the CVS parking lot turn left (like I said, it's baroque). The diagonal light turns green, but the people in line at our light start honking at the car in front, who is, you know, not driving through the red light in front of his face. I guess they could see the other light, way across the intersection and pointed off at a 45-degree angle, and thought it applied to them? Were they all in a hurry and just couldn't wait anymore? Well, it worked -- the front car waited another moment, and then just drove on through the red light, and 4 or 5 cars followed! Obviously there was nobody coming from the other direction, but here's the kicker -- the correct light then turned green, and we turned left only to see a Somerville cop sitting at the front of the line on Broadway, in full view of the cars who just overthrew the red light. Not responding. Nope. Just sitting there, looking down into his lap -- he'd missed the whole thing. Classic.

2. Sunday, 5:48 pm, Davis Square -- Kim and I are driving over to see Belinda, the lovely local willow tree enshrined in song by nutty local harpist Deborah Henson-Conant whose rollicking show we had just enjoyed (and Kim had cunningly scored a free CD in the middle of, but I digress), pulling up to the T intersection of Day and Elm streets. You can only turn right onto Elm, and there are ample One Way and No Left Turn signs, for once, to indicate this -- despite the fact that you can see across to College Ave from there, and it seems like, "Hey, that's where I want to go, why can't I just drive over there?" Well, you can't, the whole square is a rotary and you have to drive around the block, and admittedly there are no signs indicating that fact. So what does the gold Camry (need I say more?) in front of us do, but roll out into the road and then dart straight left and onto College Ave -- a move I have never seen because they are lucky they weren't killed. Nobody on the streets they crossed over would be expecting a car to come from this direction, and they could easily have been squashed by a speeding car or a bus turning out of the depot. Unreal! Of course I honked madly but they just drove on. Idiots.

3. Two odd pickup trucks -- Plowing snow in a parking lot in Bedford yesterday, a black truck emblazoned with an electron logo and the name "EINSTEIN'S BRIGHT IDEA ELECTRICAL." Do they rewire your house according to the theory of relativity or something? Then this morning in Lexington, another black truck with a big blue logo on the door: "PEACE OF MIND PLUMBING AND HEATING." That's who you call when you just think you hear the faucet dripping in the middle of the night.