Birmingham Town Square
Birmingham City Township
Birmingham City Centre
The Dreaded Roundabouts
Last Saturday I went to Birmingham Museum and Gallery (where I intern) for a Edward Burne-Jones seminar. It was interesting-there were six speakers. A few of them, I think, were nervous. They kept stuttering and I have trouble at times understanding them with the accent, so I missed parts of their presentation because I could not understand them. Two of the speakers were awesome and very interesting. The train ride was fairly direct (2 hours each way), so that is always a pleasant change.
I "jumped the gun" when I said my driving was improving. I've been violating the law all over the place. Josh and a friend were hired to paint a house and needed to go to the hardware store for more paint on Friday, but few people have cars. I was just working on a paper and needed a break, so I went to pick them up. For the most part, I did well and I had to go through roundabouts mind you. Anyway, we're almost back to the house and Mark (the friend, British, in the backseat) says as I drive through an intersection (in a residential neighborhood) "did you know you ran that stop sign?" I said "what stop sign?" I didn't see any stop sign. Apparently, the two thin white-dotted lines painted on the roads at the intersections are stop signs. Are you kidding me? I'm concentrating so hard making sure I'm staying in the correct lane and so on that I don't pay attention to lines painted on the road unless they are the lines down the middle and crosswalks. Besides, most of them are faded and you can't really tell what they are, but to me, they do not signal "stop". Then, Josh and I were going to a movie and he says "Give Way" and I'm thinking what? That's what they call "Yield" signs, which I've been driving through as well. I see them and often wonder to myself "is that the same thing as Yield? That's kind of dumb wording-why not just say Yield?" By then, I'm way past the sign (and I did not "give way") and thinking of something else. However, it makes Josh nervous, so he yells "Give Way", which scares me and is probably far more dangerous while I'm driving. To top it all off, we went to pick up a pizza at Pizza Hut and there's a few entrances into the shopping area and I picked the first one. Josh, calmly, tells me to quickly turn left because it is a one-way entrance and the man I just passed looked scared when I pulled in the one-way road. On a positive note, I have been staying in my lane.
