Squeezes Anyone?

Doc. B. and I were on our way to David's Barnes and Noble bookstore yesterday to spend a gift card (thanks M & D!). We'd been in the house pretty much all day so we decided to run a few other errands while we were out. One stop was to fill up the gas tank. Doc. B. usually does this north of town where the fuel is cheaper but we decided to just go ahead and stop at the BP in Little Five Points since we were buzzing right by. As I was taught by my mom, if you're filling up, you might as well clean off the windshield too. So in good form, I went about looking for a squeegee. I should have known better. In this part of town, the gas stations don't put out squeegees. They'd be stolen by people who would then stand on the corner and try to get you to pay them to wash your windows. These windshield wiper guys scared the crap out of me the first few times they ever approached my car. This was before I learned that this was routine and normal and that all they expected in return was a little spare change.

Just as I stopped looking for the squeegee, I noticed the above sign taped to a post near the gas pump. I couldn't resist capturing a photo with my phone. Doc. B. and I got so tickled by the sign, and I was laughing so hard, that I decided not to go in ask for "squeezes and paper towels" - the windshield would just have to stay dirty until the next time the tank was running low. Despite my tears of laughter, I was certainly tempted to go in and at least ask for a squeeze. I couldn't bring myself to do it. I guess I should have at least looked to see who was behind the counter before I made that decision - could have been some hot gas station attendant. You never know, it could happen.

I begged Doc. B. to figure out how to get my camera phone pictures onto my computer so that I could be more spontaneous with my blog photos in the future. We spent the next 15 minutes in the Barnes and Noble parking lot learning how to e-mail my camera photos to my mindspring account. It worked! Then I remembered another photo I had saved on my phone. I took the picture a while back at a local Thai restaurant. Once again, I couldn't resist documenting a sign such as this. Who on earth would put sticks or bricks under a door, and more importantly, why would someone do this? And if you can fit a stick or a brick under a door, it doesn't seem like a very good door to begin with. Wouldn't you agree?

High End Trash?

I don't know if it's like this across the U.S., but in Atlanta, the Martin Luther King holiday is to be considered a "day on" instead of a "day off." Around these parts, if you have the "day off" of work, you do some sort of volunteer work rather than sleep in and waste the day away - in other words, a "day on." When I worked in Corporate America, my "day on" was to actually go to work; but in the government, it's a recognized holiday. So when I became a federal employee a few years ago, I started my own MLK day-on tradition - I pick up trash on our street.

Over the few years I've been doing this, the trash has changed. I don't know if you could say that the trash has "improved" but it certainly isn't the kind of trash we used to pick up when we first moved into this (neighbor)hood. Back in the day, the refuse consisted of endless mini zip-lock drug bags, Krispy Kreme doughnut boxes, Krystal burger wrappers, Wild Irish Rose bottles, Old English 800 cans, three week old copies of the rain-soaked local free newspaper, and cigarette butt after cigarette butt.

Yesterday,however, I had some unusual items turn up in my City of Decatur "pay as you throw" bag: an Amstel Light beer can, a snow-frosted week-old copy of the Wall Street Journal, an empty box of Boston Baked Beans candy, a Black and Mild Cherry Vanilla cigar wrapper, a high school report card with all A's and a B, and a to-go-box from the Buckhead Diner.

The Oakhurst trash is clearly moving up in the world...