Random Observations On Tuesday, September 4

Maybe nobody else finds this stuff odd or even interesting, I can't tell anymore, but I do. So I write about it. Here's stuff I saw and/or heard today:

• Fans of the University of Michigan are acting like there were several untimely, grisly deaths in their immediate families over the weekend because they lost their season opening football game to unranked, lower division Appalaichan State. They had hopes of competing for a national championship and will now be lucky to be ranked anywhere near the top 10 for the rest of the season. I guess I understand their grief; it's not like there's a war going on or anything.
• After a long weekend in Orlando (which I will write about soon) I had to do laundry. So I went to the laundromat after work tonight. While sitting there watching "Gilmore Girls" (there's only one TV), the woman who manages the laundromat, who I am positive is at least ten years younger than I am, was doing a crossword puzzle and asked me "What team does Joe Namath play for?". I answered "Uh, the New York Jets" and then added under my breath "about 35 years ago". I know time stands still at the laundromat. I didn't know it actually went backwards.
• Also at the laundromat, I overheard a teenage girl tell her mother "Today in the hallway, my jeans slipped down and I looked back and like, every guy was looking at me and checking me out". Was mom appalled, nonplussed, taken aback or otherwise affected in any way by this declaration? Not that I could tell. Of course, she was folding a tee shirt that read 'RENT ME...by the hour' on it at the time, so maybe topics like that are commonplace in mother/daughter confabs. I don't know. For me, it just further reinforces that fact that I am not cut out to be a parent.
• I had to buy a new phone charger because I left mine in Orlando so I went to WalMart. As I cruised the aisles, I heard a slow, solemn military drum cadence over the loudspeakers. It took me a minute but I realized they were playing Elvis's 'An American Trilogy', which is a medley of 'Dixie', 'The Battle Hymn Of The Republic' and 'All My Trials'. I'm sorry, I just think that in itself is kind of funny.
• I did the self checkout thing, as usual, and was halfway to the door before I realized I'd left four dollars in the change tray. I turned around and got it and on my way back to the exit, the hatchet-faced receipt-checker, or scorn-wielder or whatever her title is said to me, "You don't have to worry, we wouldn't have kept it. We'd have taken it to the office". Her tone suggested that I was somehow insulting her integrity by remembering I had left change behind and coming back immediately to get it. I guess I was supposed to leave, give her an opportunity to graciously retrieve it for me and then wait an acceptable time (I don't know, three days? A week?) before returning to the office to claim it. Sorry, I didn't know the protocol. I tried to make a little joke about how I needed the money and she said, without a little joke, "Yeah, I know you do". Now what the hell was that all about?