One of the great things about my job is I can sort of plan my commute to and from work around rush hour, bless my heart.

On the negative side, rush hour seems to have extended itself into most of the day, half the night and pretty much all weekend, thanks to a decade or three of virtually unrestricted residential and strip mall growth hereabouts.

Houses and cars and people and strip malls and billboards we’ve got plenty of – road, we don’t. I get reminded of this often, particularly when I try to leave Richmond Hill between, say 3-7 p.m., by going down 144 to that exit.

While the roundabout has helped move things along, there’s still that whole funneling two steady running lanes of thick traffic bound for I-95 into one when they’re all hell-bent on being the first to exit Richmond Hill before anybody else (although, quite frankly, some enterprising souls stay in the left lane, go into the ‘go-around’ lane on the roundabout and then cut over to the right turn lane to get on 95, thereby saving themselves time and ensuring they’re a second faster out of the Hill. It can weird you out first time it happens. Same as when someone at crossroads light tries to take a left off 17 onto 144 – from the right hand lane.)

And, throw in all the right turns west of the Kroger traffic light and east of the entrance ramp – there’s a subdivision, then Spruce Street, then Oleander Street, then Laurel Street, then Thunderbird Drive, all in close proximity to one another. Given proximity and the tendency to tailgate folks have, coupled with the fact turn signals no longer seem to come standard on new vehicles, and it’s a wonder there aren’t 100 fenderbenders a day out there. Maybe there are.

And now, of course, there’s a fast-food restaurant going in along that stretch, and with the city’s commerce park off Thunderbird likely to lure in something big, it’s going to keep getting more crowded for motorists. It reminds me, in a way, of the gauntlet one runs on Highway 21 trying to get from the Highway 30 intersection down to the interstate.

At some point years ago after traffic routinely backed up six or seven miles, the state put in a diverging diamond interchange and added a long right hand turn lane to help move things along.

What happened next? Friendly developers put up convenience stores and fast food restaurants alongside it, the whole way down, which backed traffic right back up again.

I do not know how to fix what is likely only to add to the angst and aggravation of trying to navigate Richmond Hill, a wonderful place with a traffic problem. It’s obviously too late to stop projects already here, and short of figuring out some way to throw in a frontage road or blowing the whole thing up and starting over, it doesn’t seem there’s much of answer except avoiding the place whenever possible. Which isn’t always possible.

Still, as the city leadership begins moving toward figuring out how it’s going to use its voter-approved redevelopment powers through those tax allocation districts, or TADs, hopefully they’ll have some sort of plan in the works to deal with traffic. Because traffic, like people and houses and strip malls, are one thing this place won’t ever run out of.

Onward: I was working the Pembroke Christmas do Saturday when a nice lady looked at me skeptically and said I didn’t look like my picture in the paper.

Alas, that photo is 4-5 years old and leftover from the days when I was working as editor of two papers, you see, and traipsing between here and Hinesville frequently and hardly ever stopping to eat. As a result, I was much lighter. I also did the double pump Savannah Bridge Run and finished the Savannah Rock and Roll Marathon during that time.

As proof, somewhere there’s a photo of me at a finish line in dead last, looking like I needed a wheelchair, yet finish I did – then spent the rest of the weekend in my recliner, wondering if that was what rigor mortis felt like.

But, anyhow, time frog-marches on. I am older now. I also screwed up last week and shaved off my beard because everybody has a beard these days, even some second graders. I like to be different.

It was a bad move. In scientific terms, I made what’s called a boo-boo. I knew it soon as I looked in the mirror and was startled to see some old woman looking back at me.

“Goodness,” I said, and blinked and goggled, and looked again. There that hideous woman was, blinking and goggling out at me. I smiled. The old woman smiled back at me.

So, the beard will return. Hopefully it will be re-energized after a weeklong absence and make me a better editor in 2022, because Lord knows I need improving.

Next week: Santa letters take over the BCN.