I went to the laundromat last night after work. They've got Wi-Fi now (good!); you have to hunt down an attendant for the password (bad!); there are no power outlets so you can always be chargin' (ugly!).
A guy waiting for his clothes to dry had an Ovation acoustic guitar with him. I saw him patting his pockets down in search of a pick. I remembered seeing one at the bottom of my laundry basket, so I rooted around, found it and handed it to him. He thanked me and began to play.
I had a shaker/thunderstick in my car's trunk (because that's where all my percussion instruments have been hiding out since this summer's CampCamps), so I went and got it and played along. He was kind enough to pass the guitar off after a little while.
We made 40 cents. That would've covered seven minutes' worth of dryer time. We gave it to a man who'd walked in and was asking people for change.
Show us what's in your rearview mirror.
I'd just gotten back in the car, fresh from getting the 'locks done, after putting some coins in the parking meter twenty or thirty minutes beforehand. I just missed getting ticketed. The fellow parked behind me did not. If you look closely at his driver's-side windshield wiper, you can see his.
Take a picture of something that made you smile.
Take a picture of something under construction.
You know, just by coincidence, I was hungry last night. I wandered down to the Albertson's in our neighborhood and picked up a bottle of wine (Fetzer riesling, though the gewurtztraminer was sorely tempting -- I have to pick up a bottle and spill a few drops across my tongue sometime before month's end).
[...] Neither grape is popular in the U.S. market. Only 1.7 percent of the varietal wine sold in the last year in the United States was Riesling, according to ACNielsen. And Gewurztraminer (ga-VERTZ-tra-meen-er) sales are a fraction of Riesling's.
That's always good news for bargain buyers, because trendy wines cost more. You get a lot of flavor for your buck with Gewurztraminer and Riesling. [...]
(Oooh!)
Then I walked next door to Merritt Bakery, went in and ordered a four-piece combo. If you smile and ask real nice, you can substitute the potato salad for some soup, so that was what I did. I ordered some chicken gumbo (since the real gumbo is just too shellfishy for me to handle). Then I paid, waited a few minutes and got my order.
I walked outside and realized why there was no one parked outside the restaurant. I think they wanted to resurface the blacktop, and it's probably a good idea considering the work went into rebuilding after the fire back at the end of January.