RAVE to the party of nurses at a restaurant in Woodinville who overheard my wife and I talking to our server that we were celebrating our 49th wedding anniversary that night. They not only paid our bill, but ordered dessert on top of it, then walked out before we knew what happened. I want to thank them and know that we will pay this forward!
RANT to closed lobbies in fast food establishments. The drive-thru is a real pain and impossible for many. A nice juicy hamburger, fries and a drink is so much tastier and relaxing inside once in awhile.
RAVE to hardware store saviors. During a major downpour, two very kind employees of the new home-improvement store in Lynnwood tried to jump-start my very dead car. My 84-year-old mother and 9-month-old puppy were in the car freezing and wet, with no assistance in sight from my roadside-assistance insurance. Upon purchasing the jumper cables in hopes of finding a kind customer, two young men that work at the store offered to assist us. Chivalry is not dead even if the battery still was! Thank you for drowning in the rain with me, gentlemen.
RANT to the poor maintenance of northbound Interstate 5 near the Olive Way exit. The paint delineating the lanes is faded and does not match the old lines in the asphalt. The painted lines are not visible to drivers as they come under the Olive Way overpass especially at night and in rain, so drivers follow the lines in the asphalt instead causing them to swerve at the last minute to correct. It is multiple accidents waiting to happen!
RAVE to good Samaritans. The week before last, I took my truck up North Mercer Way intending to load it up with some tree logs recently cut and left on the roadside. At my first glance, the logs looked only a foot long. However, after lugging the first one into the truck, I knew I had misjudged their size and weight. I struggled loading a couple more into the truck. I stood huffing and puffing when a young jogger passed by, came back and asked if I needed some help. YES, they are much heavier than I thought. We then picked one up together and he then did a couple by himself. We introduced ourselves. “You are a huge help, what do you do?” “I am a forensic engineer, you know we figure out how to do things that can’t be done.” “Do you mean like loading this pile of logs?” “Well, not exactly this kind of work.” “How much of this pile do you want to get?” “All of it,” I replied. So, we loaded all the logs into the truck. I then secured the load and drove home. Satisfied, tired, happy and grateful to this 30-year-old who stopped to help an 83-year-old man he had just met while jogging by. Surely there is much right in America.
RANT to all the Sammamish parents who pick up their grade-school children instead of having them ride the buses. There are 200 cars every school day blocking our roads waiting to pick up kids. Picking up by car like this is dangerous, anybody could come around and take a kid.
The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.