About a mile into my walking route there’s a gas station that I usually stop at to grab a bottle of water or a SoBe, or something comparable.
Not having any cash yesterday morning when I went for my walk I opted to bring along a bottle of Fuze that I had at home rather than having to hit an ATM before I got to the gas station.
When I went for a second walk in the afternoon I swung by the ATM across the street, then opted to pick up something to drink from the Safeway, once again avoiding the gas station.
Around nine years ago there was a bracket on the underside of my car that came loose. As it actually touched the surface of the road, I’m certain that it probably kicked up a fair number of sparks. Before I could get it looked at to figure out what the bracket was for and if it could be safely removed or easily reattached, my gas tank sprung a leak.
When I discovered this and realized that I’d been driving along and shooting sparks directly at my leaking gas tank, it occurred to me that maybe the Universe was trying to set me up.
There had been a time not long before that when, while overloaded with groceries, I had stepped on a patch of ice, resulting in me attaining a horizontal position in the air, a position that I remained in until (and after, for quite some time)hitting the asphalt of the parking lot.
While I was lying there, I retraced all of my steps and was able to see just how the universe had gone about creating an elaborate set up just for meto take this fall, so a bit later it hadn’t taken much effort to see that the Universe had escalated its attempts to annoy and/or seriously injure me when I saw the sparks-leaky gas tank connection.
Now, in all honesty, I’ve never really believed that the universe was trying to kill me, or even trying to inconvenience me personally, but sometimes things happen that just make me wonder.
Such as, to return to my original point, yesterday, when I never went to the gas station that under normal circumstances I would go to at least once, and often twice. Because I had not stopped there I didn’t get to see the notice posted on their door explaining that they would be closed today from 6 am to 4 pm, and so, fully expecting to be able to attend to it a quarter of the way through my walk, I set out from my apartment having taken no steps to ensure my adequate hydration as I trudged through the oppressive swamp-like Virginia heat.
This was not only a major inconvenience; it also had the potential to be life-threatening, given just how friggin’ hot it is here.
Of course, I had sense enough to cut my walk short and head right home, where I proceeded to guzzle ice water as if I were in some kind of chug-a-lug contest, though I didn’t have sense enough to realize, until I was almost home, that there’s a Quizno’s right by the gas station, so I could have bought something to drink there and not had to cut my walk short.
Ah well.
On my morning walk yesterday, in addition to not going to the gas station, I spotted a woman a fair distance ahead of me who, as far as I could tell, seemed attractive. From what I could tell, based on the fact that her legs weren’t the sort of ropey-muscled legs of an older woman whose skin has lost a fair amount of elasticity, she was reasonably young.
That may not be a very nice observation to make about women who are visibly aging, but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. When I’m walking I see a lot of women in their mid to late forties whose skin looks altogether too thin and somewhat loose.
I realize that it’s a natural and unavoidable part of getting older, and I acknowledge that with the passing of time I’m not getting any younger-looking myself, but the fact of the matter is that the woman I saw walking ahead of me had nice, well-rounded and smooth-looking legs, and so I estimated her age as being somewhere under thirty.
(As a complete aside, I just got a phone call from some woman, calling for someone named Michael, who made me repeat – several times – that I was not, in fact, Michael, and once she finally accepted that fact she got very annoyed at me for not being Michael, at which point I hung up on her)
She also had a spring in her step that I found oddly engaging, and so I tried to pick up some speed so that I could get a better look at her. I was closing the gap between us when she rounded a corner and I saw the telltale protrusion of her pregnant belly.
Deciding at that point that it didn’t matter one way or the other if she was cute, I didn’t bother even looking to see if she was and I allowed my pace to slacken.
That always seems to be the way it goes on those occasions when I spot a young woman from behind who’s not pushing a stroller; as soon as she turns I see that she has a little while to go before she’ll need it, but inevitably she will be pushing a stroller.
There was an instance last week when something similar happened and the girl turned out to not be pregnant (or at least not visibly pregnant), though that didn’t work out much better for me.
I had spotted her from behind waiting at the pharmacy as I made my way to the dairy section. She looked good, but I wasn’t able to get a look at her.
(While I was in the dairy section, by the way, which is in the same aisle as the beer, there were too guys behind me as I looked at yogurt who were debating about what beer to buy. They started out looking at the Guinness and talking about how good that was. As I moved down the aisle they seemed to follow me, loudly extolling the virtues of every frickin’ beer they saw. The fact that this was happening the day after I’d had that dream about Eric and his nonstop praise of beer made it that much more irritating, and was probably another example of the Universe just straight-up fucking with me.)
After I finished in the dairy aisle I started to head over to another section, at which point my path crossed that of the girl I’d seen at the pharmacy. I got a good look at her and confirmed that she was very cute and not pregnant, though she did appear to be rather young. Like high school young, though that seemed incongruous with the amount and type of groceries she had in her cart, so I’m operating on the assumption that she was older than she looked.
As we passed each other we made eye contact, and I could tell right away that she wasn’t at all happy about that and was very relieved to see that I was headed in the opposite direction.
Once I had gotten a bit past her, though, I realized that what I was looking for was actually located the other way, and so in a decisive yet awkward manner I turned and headed in the opposite direction quickly enough that it might have appeared to an observer, or to the young woman, that as soon as her image had imprinted in my mind after our passing glance, I had decided to change my course so as to follow her.
Clearly this is what she thought, as she immediately began to pick up the pace in order to put as much distance between us as possible.
To try to put her mind at ease I immediately veered off and pretended to look at the cakes so that she had a chance to get farther away from me.
That’s something that happens to me fairly often as well; my general dorky awkwardness often makes me appear creepier than I actually am.
During the week we ordinarily have a conference call meeting for work, but on occasion we will actually get together and meet in person. Such was the case today when Scott treated us to lunch at Fuddruckers.
Once again I overestimated how bad traffic would be, so I got there really damned early. I wandered around the various shops for a while, stopping at a Radio Shack to pick up a new set of headphones for my mp3 player. There’s nothing actually wrong with the headphones that I have, and they actually sound really good, but they actually cover my ears, and in this humidity that leads to a lot of sweating, so I wanted a pair with less spongy surface area. I picked up a pair of the ear bud style headphones for $10…and they sound about as good as you’d expect $10 headphones to sound. They do at least have an inline volume control, though, and when I wore them for my walk today my ears stayed relatively dry.
While I was in the Radio Shack I noted that the guy working there was actually watching “Eddie and the Cruisers” on all of the various TVs on display. At first I had thought it was the sequel, “Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives!” but upon later reflection I realized that I was mistaken. It just seemed like an odd thing for a guy from Pakistan or wherever to be watching.
At Fuddruckers I had a very tasty burger. Scott and I had both initially ordered chocolate shakes with our burgers, but afterwards saw sign for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup shakes, and so decided to change our orders. We were told to tell the girl making them that we’d changed our order, which we did.
Our shakes were brought to our table shortly after we’d gotten our food, and as I began drinking it I realized that it was just a chocolate shake. We were going to just chalk it up as “Oh well,” but, randomly, the manager came around to ask us how everything was, so Scott mentioned the shake mistake and so, in a few shakes we were brought new shakes, which were delicious, but were ultimately too much of a good thing.
(Yeah, I know; I went a little “Dr. Seuss” on the whole “shake” thing)
After lunch I stopped at the grocery store to pick up some snacks for work this weekend, then went on my ill-fated walk.
And that brings us mostly up to date.
Last night we had a thunderstorm, and since a stiff breeze, or even just a sunny day, will tend to knock out most public utilities in NoVA, I wasn’t a bit surprised when my cable Internet went out, though I was surprised that the power never went out. As of lunch today, Brian and Kathleen had been without power since 8:00 last night. I’m sure it was just a fluke, though, and my power will just randomly go out for a few hours on some bright, beautiful day.
In any case, for the rest of the nigh the “Cable” light on my cable modem flashed, indicating that I had no connection, and it was still flashing when I got up at 8:00 this morning.
However, right after 9:00 the light went solid and I was surfing again. This indicates to me that the problem that was preventing me from connecting was obviously something that could be fixed in literally a matter of minutes and that the only reason it hadn’t been fixed in the preceding 13 hours was that they were simply waiting for someone to come in during normal business hours.
I find that kind of orientation towards customer service pretty much unacceptable, but that’s the problem with cable companies; they tend to be the only game in town.
This particular game, though, has been bankrupt for as long as I’ve lived in Ashburn. The cable company, Adelphia, had been family-owned, and the family treated the company like their own personal petty cash drawer, apparently.
In a joint venture with Comcast, Time Warner Cable has purchased Adelphia. In some markets Adelphia divisions will become TWC divisions. In other areas, like here, for example, they’ll become Comcast. Ideally that will improve the level of service when that takes effect.
I continue to watch “Everyday Italian” pretty much, well, every day. I’m just powerless to look away from the crazy, hot, Italian chick who hosts it.
The other day the show’s set up was that she was preparing food for a small bridal shower for one of her friends. I noted that when her friends arrived she had adhered to standard hot chick behavior in that none of her friends was anywhere near as hot as she is.
Hey, she might be crazy, but she’s no dummy. Every hot chick knows that having friends that are uglier than they are makes them look that much hotter.
In any case, that’s probably more than enough for today’s entry, and that will bring the week to a close. I hope you all have a good weekend, and, for those of you who have plans for it, a good Fourth of July.
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