Thursday, March 5, 2009

WaWa Woes, This and That

Arose very early yesterday (~6:00! how do those working stiffs do that?) to attend a once monthly (thank goodness) meeting over in Leonardtown. Upon departing the meeting I decided I’d take a chance on a collision and stop at the WaWa at 4/235 and gas up before getting a Latte. Deftly maneuvered around various obstacles, got out my little book to record mileage, amounts, cost, etc., and put it on the seat along with the cell phone and keys from the ignition. Got out and pushed enough buttons to allow the machine to dispense the fuel, stared at the driver behind me until the “click” of the pump told me it had finished, carefully replaced the nozzle, waited for the little receipt to spit out and reached for the door handle....... Only to discover that it somehow had locked itself! Rattle, rattle, all doors locked. Well, I’ll just call MFO – whoops! Cell phone in car so as not to cause an explosion. So I go inside (which is an experience in itself) and asked the nice lady re-stocking the shelves if there were a pay phone. Mercifully I had 50 cents in my pockets. Upon hearing my plight she graciously offered the “store phone” (besides the flutter mobile was hogging a money source). Also mercifully MFO at the digs overcame the aversion to answer any funny looking caller ID, and answered. After some anxious minutes, she appeared in the Momster, key in hand and we moved on. Lessons learned!

Speaking of WaWa, as we’ve noted before they are almost always full. If you look closely however, at least half of them are abandoned for long periods of time while their owner is inside apparently enjoying a cup of coffee or maybe leisurely consuming a sandwich. A previous visit resulted in seeing somebody pull up to the pump, get out, and had not reappeared by the time I had finished. I don’t get it. Further yet speaking of WaWa, why is it that the one just north of gate one is the only one that has those idiot “Hi, WaWa guy again!” commercials playing over the too loud speakers every 20 seconds or so? The one at 235/4 doesn’t, in fact they have some reasonably nice music over the too loud speakers. It’s just the one by the flutters that seems to feel the need to harass a captive audience. Maybe that’s why people avoid their cars..

And, watch it people, we're sliding back into bad driving habits...Instead of waiting an eternity for the demons in my light at Millstone to let me turn left, one of them cast a spell on a driver wishing (as I did) to go north on 235 causing a four car line to form while the mesmerized driver waited that eternity to have all four lanes completely clear before directly crossing the “merge lane” into the nearest lane, proceed north and turn off right at the next street to go to the bank. That’s why they supply cars with horns, methinks.

This Friday is “first Friday” over in Leonardtown – galleries, eateries and general good times.

Next Friday (3/(yikes!), Saturday and Sunday is the annual Friends of the Library Book Sale at the fairgrounds. Bigger and better than ever this year. there's even (edible) food.

Carr’s, those people who make the expensive water crackers has a new product called “Cheese Melts”. They’re pretty good.


DFD

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What kind of car locked you out? My fiancee has an '03 Impala ("the Impaler", we're from Boston, that's how it sounds when we talk about it), and I had the exact same thing happen to me once. Lucky for me, it only locked the driver's door (what?!) and she proceeded to ridicule me for the rest of the day for being "smart" enough to leave the keys in the car (but I didn't even walk away from it, just hopped out to talk to someone). You'd think cars would be smarter than that. But that's an engineer talking...

Don't you know they need all those lanes to be clear? Because around here, you never know if that car in the far left lane may suddenly decide that it's time to pull all the way over and go to the bank, too. Since the turn signal hasn't been invented down here yet, there's just no way to know!

So if, in my excitement at finally seeing some real snow down here, I took my 4x4 out on the roads on Sunday (just as it started snowing, before there was really anything sticking) and proceeded to wiggle the steering wheel every 30 seconds or so (just wagging the car from side to side, not actually losing traction) to watch in glee as the cars around me scattered like startled fish, does that mean I'm going to hell?