just a small whine

Last night I went to the Bethesda Barnes & Noble to look for some gifts and a card. They really ought to oil their escalators, because they currently sound like dogs yelping and crying in pain. Seriously, they sound like puppies are repeatedly being crushed beneath someone’s heel. It’s unnerving.

Once again, I was unable to snag a copy of heat magazine (grrr), but I did have some minor success in the gift-buying department, including snagging two British lad mags that were wrapped in plastic, and thus made me feel like I was purchasing porn. At a store with a Starbucks in it.

On a cool note, I was flipping through the newest PostSecret book, which I have yet to buy, and I found someone’s secret wedged inside. I’d heard that some people were leaving secrets in bookstore copies of the various PostSecret books, but that’s the first time I encountered one in the flesh. It gave me the biggest grin. I loved it. And no, I won’t reveal the person’s secret to you.

Then I realized that my meter was probably running low, so I ran back to my car. And I found…a parking ticket. Oh, damn. That’s only the second parking ticket I’ve gotten in my life—the first one came when I attended a Chernobyl 20th anniversary memorial observation on Capitol Hill last April and inadvertently parked in a 2-hour-parking-only zone. I worked in Bethesda for four years, so I know how notoriously bloodthirsty those parking cops can be, but although the ticket is only $35, I’m still irked by it, mainly because it’s like, “Does Bethesda—a town that has money oozing out of every pore—really need my freaking $35?? I think not!”

Anyway...


song heard most recently before posting:
Indian Summer—Tori Amos