I can’t think of anything clever to say about this, so let’s just roll with the picture, shall we?

I assure you that this is not a hoax. There apparently is a building so named, in the Southeast Portland area, and someone went to the trouble of emblazoning said building name in big letters.

Wow.

Normally I’m not fond of the whole “Let’s mess with a good thing” mentality that prevades modern corporate culture. (C2? What in the name of New Coke is that?) And on the face of it, your average Ritz cracker doesn’t need much improving. The entire purpose of a Ritz is to be a small edible platter for some other snackfood.

They’ve started making two additional flavors of Ritz cracker, now. One is a “wheat Ritz,” which is as unimpressive as it sounds. The other, though… well, I suppose my friend Geoffrey won’t ever know how yummy they are.

Garlic-butter Ritz. They’re dee-lish, I tell you. It’s a little round treat that tastes just like a slice of garlic bread. And if you know me, you know how much I love garlic bread.

Yum. If you like garlic bread, you owe it to yourself to at least give these new Ritz crackers a try.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to pop a breath mint…

The helicopter on patrol above Waterfront Park on a cool, drab Sunday morning should have registered as a warning in my mind.

I rolled out of bed to the alarm, actually grateful to be awake after a night full of bad dreams. After swinging by the store to pick up grub for my workday, I trekked over to the MAX station. I noted the heli’ but didn’t think much of it.

Then I noticed the runners. Two of them were waiting near my usual leaning post. I’d been blessed with good timing, as the next train was down at the Lloyd Center stop as I arrived. When the train was about to pull up, one of the two ladies quipped, “Hopefully this time they’ll let us on.”

Um. What?

The MAX train, a double-car rig, was packed solid… with folks heading downtown to take part in the 2004 Race for the Cure.

Just my luck. I actually manage to roll out of bed early enough on a Sunday to finish my chores with daylight left at the end of ‘em, and I pick the day when I have to pack in cheek-by-jowl with a trainload of joggers. Apparently the MAX was the transportation mode of choice for a sizeable percentage of Race participants this year. And since each train had to disgorge almost its entire ridership at one particular stop downtown, the entire MAX line was getting backed up quite a bit.

So there I was, packed in with dozens of women, stuck in that part of a low-floor light-rail train between two of the center-section doors, with no handholds, on a vehicle prone to making sudden motions along both the X and Y axis. I somehow managed the entire ride without stumbling into somebody or making any inappropriate physical contact.

No, I don’t know how I did it either. I do know that my calves were sore by the end of it. Maintaining balance on the MAX without handholds is hard, dammit.

Oh yes, and lest you think I’d somehow died and gone to Heaven… er, no. The women were friendly and chatty, but also out of my age range by quite a bit, thanks. Women in their 40s and 50s, some with their teenaged daughters along. All in good shape, mind you, but still. Bzzzt, sorry, thanks for playing.

Bonus points for classlessness go to the scuzzball who proclaimed loudly his relief that the “estrogen level” had gone way down once all the runners had left the train. Whatever, dude.

All things being equal, I’m glad I gave myself plenty of extra time to arrive at work when I intended to… which I did. I’m also glad I chose not to have my Neuros on, as the light banter between passengers was a better antidote than the sweet isolation of music for the crowded conditions.

Gotta love the public transit, baby!

I plead unease of the intestinal tract and equilibrium. See, I fought mild-to-worrisome nausea levels all day yesterday. (Bless my friends for putting up with my whiney-butt self all day. Bah.)

The kids arrived home from Arizona yesterday evening. As Wendi had a gig, I became the designated (quicker?) picker upper. I was dropped off at the airport, still concentrating on keeping my insides in, and made my way to the ticket counter to get my “parents pass” (for lack of a better phrase).

See, there are only three types of people allowed through the security checkpoint: Employees of the airport or an airline, ticketed passengers, and parents seeing off their children or picking them up. And that’s only one parent, not both, as we learned when we sent the kids off a month ago. So I got my pass and proceeded to the checkpoint.

The contents of my pockets: Loose change, keys, more keys, wallet, and… oops. My Leatherman Micra.

See, because I wasn’t actually flying anywhere, I didn’t give a second thought to the contents of my pockets. (Not that day, anyway. I’d thought about it the day before. Just not enough to actually take the Micra out of my pocket. Duh.) Had I been traveling I’d have been extra-careful about what I tried to get through the checkpoint. Really.

So the very polite, if not terribly friendly, TSA folks confiscated my Micra and provided a mini-lecture. Thanks, guys.

I did, mind you, get it back after the kids had arrived. But there are two amusing parts to this story:

1) Not one hundred feet from where my Micra sat in the TSA “office” drawer I saw an ad for… Leatherman. I couldn’t help but think, “Does this make sense? Advertising for sharp objects on an airport concourse, right near the security checkpoint?”

2) The ever-so-watchful TSA folks who spotted and snagged my Micra totally failed to notice that my “keychain” consists of an old, small pocketknife…

Under no circumstances whatsoever should I be drinking iced tea after 10pm on a work night. Possibly even 9pm.

(Bleargh. Who needs sleep anyway?)

I’m at home tonight, not at work. I’m lounging around, chatting, reading books, and that sort of non-work stuff.

Why? Because the parts for the UPS won’t be available until the end of the week. So we’re going to do the repairs next Tuesday night. Whee!

G’nite, all.