What I'm up to.

What I'm up to is screwing around in this awesome town in awesome fashion. The specific moment of 7:21pm caught me reading on a bench in the park. Still 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' - I'm almost done.

I blew all my money at the bar on Tuesday. I'm only talking about the paper money, though I did spend some coins there too. When I "blow all my money," I usually still have some change, or another part of the story. I have a big empty bottle from cheap Carlo Rossi wine. I cashed in all my change from that bottle before my bicycle trip, but now the bottom of the bottle contained a decent amount of coins again. Several bucks in change. I had two days off of work after Tuesday's karaoke Bud and whiskey reunion. Two days with no paltry tip-out cash, and no free meals. I had food in my cooler - pasta and cans of things like chili and noodle-meat combos. With a cooler full of clown food, I had no worries about starving.

I spent my first bit of change on some Old English toward sundown on Wednesday. $2.24. I would have invested in Steele Reserve, but apparently Steel was a very popular beer on Wednesday toward sundown. So I spent the extra $.20, and got 0.6% less alc/vol. Old English is slacking at only 7.5%. They might as well increase the alcohol content to match that of Steel and Hurricane (who hold strong at an impressive 8.1%). It's not as though Old English is perceptibly more palatable. I timed the slow finishing of my beer for the beginning of a movie. I'll just go ahead and point out that the door to the back theater here is always open, and there has never been anybody there even for the ostensible purpose of looking at tickets. So I got to see 'Mama Mia' for free. Then I went home and snuggled into bed.

I got up, and commenced with my endless walking. I got coffee with some change, and dicked around on the internet for many hours. I found the site with Jessica's Prius, which continues to bend my mind. I talked to Shelly on the phone until she went into Canada.

My plan was to wait as long as possible to cook food, so I could get away with cooking one big thing to cover the whole day. I got to where I felt hungry enough to cook around 5, as I was leaving the coffee shop. At the corner of the coffee shop's parking lot where it meets the south-facing wall of the laundromat, on a small patch of grass, was a takeout bag from a very nice pasta restaurant located a few buildings north on Main Street. Gnomes had nibbled at it until their little bellies were full, then they planted the lion's share for a big hungry man to find. The bag contained two Chinese-style takeout containers, each nearly full with different pasta entrées. Gold. Gold! I went back home and ate the first one, which was still warm and had delicious slices of spiced sausage, a big fat meatball, and a large untouched dinner roll. I was stuffed. I tied up the bag with the other entrée, and started counting out change.

I was able to purchase a Steel Reserve with a hot sweaty handful of pennies, nickels, and only a few dimes. I drank slowly, and went back to the movies. I planned to see "The Rocker," whatever that is - but nobody bought a ticket, so the movie never started. Blast. Back to Mama Mia. I watched it again, ensuring that all those songs are securely embedded in my mind. I'm forever thankful that I can amuse myself to the brink of painful grinning and much shaking of the head in disbelief. When food and fortune fall from the sky, I am one fucking happy spy. Apparently, I fell asleep for parts of Mama Mia during round one, so I got a chance to pick up what I missed. I went home and ate another delicious portion of pastafood - this time with emphasis on a cream sauce and a hefty helping of veggies. I didn't move my van. As soon as I parked there, I knew it would be a two night affair. I'm confident that I could stretch it to a week if I felt like turning it into an experiment - but the noise from the $.75 vacuums in the vicinity will send me looking for quieter pastures.