I’ve been irritable all day. Everything has been incredibly annoying. Went to the grocery store, and no one moved fast enough for my needs or purposes. Got behind a woman who was as a broad as her shopping cart, and moved at 2 MPH down the exact center of the aisle; I wanted to drop back ten yards, roll a grenade under her mumu, hold a newspaper under my head to shield me from the rain of flesh. But I didn’t have a newspaper. We’ll let her live. This time.
The person in line ahead of me had 13 items in the 10 -or-less lane. Oh yes, I counted.
Got home. Since I’m painting the guest room this week, I needed to wash the walls. Got out the TSP. Turned on the radio. The host irritated me. The station apparently hasn’t sold an ad in two months, and they’re running the SAME - DAMN - FIVE public service announcements over and OVER again. Changed to public radio; “Whaddya Know” was on, and it irritated me. The twee flavorless jazz combo irritated me. The banter irritated me. The assumption that we were all involved in a terribly clever endeavor irritated me. Then I got some TSP in my eyes.
This irritated me.
Finished irrigating my eyes; returned to the job at hand. Finished the walls. Mopped up.
Temperature in the room: 91.
Sara’s sister came back from her jaunt to Rochester; a few minutes chatting on the porch, then off to the airport. The airport irritates me. It’s been constructed in a piecemeal fashion one segment at a time, sprawling out from the old terminal. They’ve designed it to facilitate people who like to park at a great distance and take a shuttle in to the terminal. Of course, there are about 17 of these people in the world. Everyone wants to drive up to the terminal entrance and get out of the car. And everyone does. So the gigantic drop-off area across the street is utterly vacant. Classic case of designing something in a fashion to compel people to behave the way the designers want them to behave, instead of studying what people want and designing a means to accommodate them.
After 15 minutes in traffic, it was time for supper. Couldn’t cook in the inferno of Lileks Manor (one room with AC, the bedroom) and couldn’t decide what sort of food we wanted; ended up at Perkins. When you don’t know what you want, go to Perkin’s. They have a little of everything, even if it’s bland. It’s a like a video store that has a film in every genre, by every director, with every actor, and everything’s rated PG.
So we’re sitting in this prototype of the new Perkins Bakery Cafe, and I realize this is the most hideous restaurant I’ve ever been in. Too fargin’ homey. Kitsch everywhere. And the menu is now incomprehensible - 7,000 items, most of which look alike. I recall the old days when Perkin’s was a dependable place for pancakes, a burger, consistent coffee. It was orange, and 70 % of the tables were for smokers. This new version does not strike me as an improvement.
My meal was an onion-rye “deli” sandwich of various flavorless meats, each of which had the moisture extracted and replaced with salt. Just horrible.
Stopped off at the DQ on the way home; got in line between three teens, each of which irritated me for utterly separate reasons. Got Sara a Dreamsicle cone, which she enjoyed; I got a small cone, and was warned by the clerk that it was “really soft.” And indeed it was. It was also studded with ice crystals. This was -
Well, you can guess.
Went home. Dropped off Sara; she took Jasper for a walk. Went to the drugstore, having ended the day's experiment, and come to an unsurprising conclusion:
It’s not yet time to give up the nicotine gum. |
