Errands

Interesting errand run today. I went over to Walmart at Valley View to get some fishing gear for my upcoming beach excursion. Standing in front of the hooks was a familial unit consisting of more kids than I could identify. One 7-year-old was honking some squeeze toy. Another 3-year-old was sitting on the floor shrieking. For 5 minutes. Right in front of exactly where I needed to be. 

 

Then I went to look in the auto section for some WD-40, but the way was blocked by two employees who appeared to be talking about their holiday plans. I made a looping detour.

 

Then I went over the trash bag section, dodging oblivious shoppers. I finally got my stuff and headed out of the store. In the parking lot, I watched two teens almost get run over by an SUV. Then my cellphone in my pocket started randomly playing some news video from the internet. I got in my car and told my phone in a loud voice to stop playing random shit. It turns out that a lady had come up to the car beside me, and she just stopped and stared at me as if I was completely unhinged, which I might have been.

 

I left the parking area and drove over to Target to drop off some spent printer cartridges. On my way out to the car, some guy was standing in the mulched area across from the entrance playing The Godfather theme on an accordion. He was pretty good.

 

I got in the car and drove down I-581 heading to Peter's Creek Road. A giant SUV entered the interstate at Hershberger RD and merged right in front of me. I politely moved over to make room for him, I needed to get back in the right lane so that I could exit, but he proceeded to match my speed exactly. Finally, I had to brake hard in order to make the exit. The deacceleration lane for exit was populated by work vehicles, so it took some maneuvering to weave around them on my dry-rotted, nearly bald tires. They didn't notice as they were busy towing a massive mower out of a marshy quagmire.

 

I cruised down Peter's Creek road and waited to turn right onto Cove Rd so that I could cut over to Rt 419. When our light turned green, I began my turn but was blocked by a car that was stopped as it pulled out of the CVS parking area. A tiny tattooed lady was getting out of the beaten car screaming at the driver. She strutted across the road in front of traffic as she screamed at and displayed her middle finger to the sun-shielded driver.

 

While at Walmart, I had noted that gas prices had jumped over 20 cents overnight either due to the refinery fire in Philadelphia or the impending 7 cent gas tax increase slated to go into effect on July 1. So I got some gas at the Lakeside Kroger before the price rocketed up even more.

 

I made it to my bank across from the Speedway, but a teller's computer was down, a small army of employees was very concerned about problem-solving the issue...instead of getting me my money.

 

As I pulled in to the Speedway for my Big-Assed Soda (BAS), some lady was standing in the middle of the parking lot smoking a cigarette and making some odd seemingly random vocalizations. Meanwhile, a guy with a miniaturized dog on a leash was propped up against the side of the building beside a trash can.

 

I got my BAS and drove home. As I pulled in to my neighborhood, the odometer on my 1998 Honda Accord tipped 190,000 miles.