1. level crossing

I can hear train whistles from my house.  I enjoy them during the night, lonely and muted by the distance between my bedroom and the crossing, velvety-sounding in the darkness.  During the daytime I notice them less, presumably distracted by all of the ambient noise or whatever time-wasting strategy with which I am then occupied.

My office building is bordered on one side by tracks.  When our building first opened, it was a signalled crossing, i.e., passing trains blew their whistles to signal their approach, in addition to the gates, bells, and blinking lights.  The neighborhood on the other side of the tracks voted to silence the trains at that crossing, which seemed logical to me, given the other precautions.

A funny thing happened when the quiet zone was enacted, though: the whistles got obnoxious.  Instead of the reasonable toot-tooooot previously employed, the engineers leaned on the cords, sometimes sounding or thirty seconds to a minute nonstop.  It's like they were practicing trapeze tricks in there or something, swinging around and (I imagine) cackling wildly at the hullabaloo, their stripey engineer hats cocked at jaunty angles.  Take that, haughty residents and workers at adjacent office parks!  You don't like our whistles?  You find them disruptive?  Ha haaaa!  It got to the point that it was impossible to give them the benefit of the doubt, and on numerous occasions I had to ask callers to repeat themselves many times, because just when I thought it was safe to listen again, they'd psych me out. "Yes, doctor, I apologize, that was just a tra"--WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

I like to conclude it was a protest against abolishing a safety protocol -- and maybe it was -- but it was honestly unbearable.  Some of my coworkers requested permission to work from home.  One lady in particular had conniptions...but then, she had conniptions frequently, like when the guy in the neighboring cubicle was "typing with unnecessary volume."  Eventually the whistles decreased, and now I don't hear them very often outside our building, but they make known their approach from the nearest non-quiet-zone crossing.  This morning the whistle sounded every two seconds for one minute and change.  That crossing is in a more industrial zone, apparently one with less politically-involved neighbors.  Damn, that reminds me: I have to go home and study the ballots tonight so I can be a responsible citizen tomorrow.  For the record, I'd really appreciate it if the election and the World Series could both conclude tomorrow, so the barrage of endorsements can just stop already.