Yesterday, when I got home, I saw another car pulling into the space across from mine (and between me and my apartment). In the passenger seat was a big teenager; I don’t just mean tall, I don’t just mean heavy, I mean big. You know, with that ruddy expression and sullen look and a sense of mass about him. As the other car was pulling in, he was licking a Minute Maid Limeaid Pop—and we are talking huge, exaggerated licks of which you normally only see in a cartoon. I mention all of this because it explains why this guy instantly registered on my radar.

Anyway, they got out of their car, and I got out of mine and fiddled around for a moment with my work bag and such. As I walked by theirs, I noticed that the teenager had dropped the wrapper of his pop on the sidewalk, apparently unable to bring it another 45 seconds towards a trash can. Charming. I knew I had trash to empty, so I figured I’d just pick it up on my way back out in about 20 minutes.

When I headed back out, though, I’d been running late and decided to delay the trash emptying until today. So as I walked by the car with the wrapper on the sidewalk, I scooped up the wrapper—and tucked it under the windshield wiper of the car. Hopefully they got the message.

On a non-victorious moment, I hit the morning spinning class today because I already had plans for this evening with my family. And sadly, instead of Barb (who’s been filling in for about two months while they tried to find a new instructor for Wednesday mornings) it was a new woman, Barbara, who’d taken over the slot. And it seems that Barbara’s idea of a good time was playing Jimmy Buffett. As in, probably 35 of the 45 minutes of the class was Jimmy Buffett.

As I loathe Jimmy Buffett’s music with a passion, I have made a mental note that from now on if I know I can’t make the Wednesday night class, I’m re-arranging everything else to hit Monday morning instead. The instructor at that time slot and I have a much closer musical taste. Because, quite frankly, had we been on moving cycles I would’ve contemplated throwing myself in front of another one this morning, in an effort to stop the horrible music from lodging into my head.

While walking through the CVS on 14th Street (just south of Thomas Circle), I heard one woman lecturing her shopping companion in the soap aisle. “Ohhhhh, no,” she scolded, “he needs more than one bar of Dove. We need to get a three-pack of Dial! Maybe more!”

I shudder to think just how bad this guy must smell. I mean, really!

And then today, while cleaning out my spam folder, it suddenly hit me that if one was granted a wish and you wanted to go for a selfish kind, I have the perfect one. “I wish that all of the spam e-mail offers that I’m sent are real and truthful.” Because really, this day alone I’d have gotten multiple $500 gift cards to all sorts of stores, some free pizzas, a brand new Toyota (the subject line didn’t specify which model car, alas), and of course, all the genital enlargement products I would ever possibly want and then some.

And that’s just from one day. Imagine the possibilities! (I think I’d pass on the offers for Russian brides, though. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen one of those in a long while. Which is a pity, because those always amused me. I liked to joke that my mother was signing me up for those mailings.)

I recently bought two new bookcases (the Sloane from Crate & Barrel), which I absolutely love. I spent Monday evening putting them together, and then moving everything off the old bookcases (which are now sitting in the middle of the living room) and then onto the new ones. But in the process, of course, a lot of dust got stirred up. (It’s amazing how much dust was piled up on the very top of those shelves.)

I’ll be giving the entire area a good vacuuming once everything is picked up and done (there’s still some piles of stuff from the old shelves on the floor, plus of course the shelves themselves still hanging around) but the one other thing that’s always helped in the past is opening up the windows and letting the apartment air out. So after two lovely days in which we’ve had temperatures in the high-50s and even hitting the 60s, I chose this morning to open the windows.

Naturally, that means the high today will be something like 46 degrees. I suspect when I get home from spinning tonight, I’ll have flashbacks to the walk-in fridges from past employments. And now, looking at the weather forecast, tomorrow? High of 58 degrees. Hmmmm, maybe I should have waited until tomorrow. Oh well.

On the bright side, I really do love those bookshelves. And I might be doing a little reorganizing of the living room area in general as a result. Woohoo!

Greg: Yeah, so the 18-miler on Sunday went really well.
Male Co-Worker: Ah, nice! What did you do afterwards?
Greg: I decided it was time to reward myself, so I did so with Five Guys.
Male Co-Worker: Really? *boggled* Wow. Good for you.
Greg: Yeah, it was fantastic.
Female Co-Worker: Good call!

(five minutes later)

Greg: I’m so glad there isn’t a Five Guys Burgers and Fries near the office.
Male Co-Worker: Oh wow, I thought you were talking about something completely different. This makes much more sense now.

*sigh* I’m not really sure I want to ask how he even gets that sort of idea, to be honest.

…everyone knows you can’t spell.

All right. I understand that weather in the DC area is more in line with September than July, right now. (Heck, I had the windows open this morning.) Fair enough, it’s lovely out.

How that meant that the local Giant Food felt it was now time to put out Halloween-themed M&Ms, though, I’ll have no idea. The wrongness is just killing me, here.