Couple other interesting things that have happened lately:

1) While walking to my bus from work the other day, I saw a flatbed pull up to the aforementioned cockfighter’s driveway, replete with shopping carts. The driver got out and was handing them out to everyone in the alleyway. I guess people are no longer content to merely swipe them from supermarkets, but must instead construct some sort of illegal shopping cart ring. I think Hollywood should pick up on this — perhaps in Traffic 2: Kroger Crack Pipe (midwesterners should get that, dunno about the rest of y’all).

2) A minute after that happened, I run into the palm tree trimming lady. And she’s pushing a shopping cart. Full of palm tree leaves.

Everything happens in pairs, I guess. Wheelchair encounters, shopping cart happenings…

And, added story. Example of how much I’ve been working lately — I was robbed Tuesday before last. They took my Gamecube and my PS2, and some games. However, I did not realize this until that Friday. What happened was that my housemate Ted (this is at my old place, I just moved) woke up at like 8 AM (when I was long gone) and thought he heard me or Alex or someone wandering around the house. He wandered out into the living room and instead found a burglar, who freaked out, grabbed a backpack, and bolted out the window (which he’d used to enter our place, as it gets hot and we leave it a crack open — there’s a screen on it). But Ted didn’t see me for 3 days (14-hour days will do that) and wasn’t able to relay me the news. He didn’t even realize my stuff had been stolen, he just thought the backpack had been taken. It was only when he told me that I realized.

Ironies of this story:

  • Ted was groggy, couldn’t see, was completely helpless, and no threat to the burglar whatsoever.
  • Erin and I had almost beaten Eternal Darkness, a long (and hard-to-find) game which we have very little time to play, and he took not only the game, but the memory card.
  • That gamecube had taken me three tries to get, as the first two I’d gotten were busted. The last one took me a full hour standing there waiting for the EB Games employees to process my return, my warrantee, watching them to make sure they didn’t overcharge me, since they’d tried to several times before.