It was not quite light out when I woke up the first time this morning, so I closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep, waking again a bit after 7, then drifting off and waking again a bit after 8. At 8:30, though I had neither reason nor to desire to do so, I got up, as the whole sleeping in thing just didn’t seem to be in the cards.
Once I was up I decided to make myself some French toast for breakfast.
I’ve never made it before, so I was surprised that it turned out so well (I neglected to take a picture to document it the way I usually do when something turns out surprisingly well).
Years ago, when I was married, Lorie once tried making French toast and it ended up being soggy bread with vaguely cinnamon-flavored fried egg stuck to it, and that’s what I was afraid was going to happen today.
It’s not often that I’m pleasantly surprised.
After that I took a shower and then debated whether or not I was going to venture our into the world.
I needed to get gas and had been considering getting a haircut, but I was thinking about putting that off until tomorrow.
Ultimately – and uncharacteristically – I decided against procrastination and headed out into the world.
First up was the haircut.
Everything was proceeding according to the usual sequence of events as I was sitting in the chair up until she unsnapped the apron and moved the little piece of paper around my neck out of the way. I had thought that she was just brushing away the clipped hairs that had accumulated and was preparing to send me on my way, but then she stuffed a towel into the collar of my shirt and proceeded to lather up the back of my neck, at which point she produced a straight razor and shaved it.
That was a first.
Normally the person cutting my hair just quickly zaps the back of my neck with the clippers a couple of times, as it’s not as though the back of my neck ever gets especially hairy.
So that was kind of odd.
After that I stopped to get gas and made my way to Wal-Mart. I was going there to buy some protein bars that I like and have been unable to find elsewhere, but I was certain that there was something else I needed.
Though I couldn’t think of what else that might be, I was certain that it would come to me once I got there.
Upon arriving I stopped to grab a quick lunch in the McDonald’s, choosing to seat myself as far as possible from this pulsating mass of screaming children that had infested several tables.
The infestation was clearing up when I sat down, though, and as I was sitting there eating my quarter pounder and reading an e-book on my PDA,
One of the kids – a short, barrel-shaped fat kid – was walking past my table on his way to the garbage and he nearly head-butted me as he thrust his massive cranium between me and the PDA to stare at it for a few seconds before making an approving-sounding grunt and continuing on his way.
I fought the impulse to push him out of the way…as the strain of trying to move that much mass would probably have caused me to pull some muscles.
Seriously, if the kid would have just said, “Hey, what’s that?” or something, I would have been inclined to be affable, but the sudden intrusion of fat kid melon into my personal space was rather off-putting.
Once I’d finished with lunch I wandered the store in the hopes of figuring out what else I needed to get. Said hopes were in vain, and after grabbing my protein bars I was off in search of register that didn’t look like a line at the DMV.
That search, too, was in vain, and I ended up behind a very large woman at a self-checkout, ultimately moving over to an express lane when the woman, scanning her items at a rate of one every three minutes, got hit with the “Please wait for assistance” message.
There was only one person in front of me in the express lane I’d moved to, but for some reason the cashier needed to spend a couple of minutes making sure that some item was bagged and positioned “just right” in her cart before returning to scan her remaining items.
To ensure that things went even less smoothly the customer paid with her debit card and requested cash back in an amount that forced the cashier to count higher than four.
Once that was accomplished and the woman should have been on her way, she decided to take a look at her receipt and start asking questions about the cost of a particular item.
Without really meaning to, I sighed in a way that clearly said, “Look lady, you’ve paid your money and all of your stuff is bagged and in your cart; you have officially forfeited your right to interact with this cashier any further as I attempt to buy my two items. Further, you’ve just requested $120 in cash back in addition to whatever your total was, so I think you can afford the extra ten cents you think you’ve been charged. If you have a problem, take it to the service desk.”
However, while my irritated exhalation of air clearly said all of that, she obviously didn’t hear it and was going to persist in her quest to verify the final tally, but the cashier had already begun scanning my stuff, which forced her to move on.
Despite this, I still got out of there before the lady at the self-checkout did.
Once I got home I decided that with the recent break in the oppressive heat and humidity that now would be a good opportunity to get in some quality chillaxation time on the hammock.
The Nano/noise-cancelling headphone combination made for a pleasant aural atmosphere, but heat and humidity are still such that a lot of sweating was going on wherever I came into contact with the hammock, and so I decided to just call it a miss, head into the bedroom, turn on the fan, and take a nice 2 hour nap.
And that’s been my day so far. I don’t foresee anything especially interesting happening for the rest of it – particularly since nothing interesting happened in the first part – but if it does, I’ll let you know.
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