Waze's Cookie Monster voice is the only thing keeping me sane right now

Back in the summer of 2019, the Waze map navigation app announced a partnership to celebrate the 50th anniversary ofSesame Street. Cookie Monster was by far the most popular voice option for guiding you around the neighborhood, so in November of 2019, Waze brought the excitable carbo-loader back for a limited time.

I don't know why I downloaded it. But I did. I don't even use Waze that much normally, as I find that the time saved from the small corner-cutting ends up getting mostly cancelled out by the additional attention I have to pay to its little tiny tricky. Like that time it helped me shave off 20 minutes of rush hour traffic in Connecticut by taking me 30-miles off the route along an endlessly winding and unlit narrow road. Truth be told, driving through Danbury may have actually been less stressful.

But I've been making a lot of trips back and forth between Ithaca, NY and Boston, MA lately, for some personal reasons. Like, every 2 weeks. Or sometimes even more frequently. The drive is a little under 6 hours, and it's just kind of green. The entire time. There aren't any real sights or landmarks to note, there are only about 3 turns to make along the way, and there are never many other cars on the road. And my Volkswagen Jetta with its broken cruise control really seems to long for the Autobahn of its manufacturing home, which makes it frighteningly easy for me to creep to dangerous speeds without even noticing. Read the rest