Stick shifts and safety belts and bucket seats have all got to go

The first time I used the heater in my car was when I was mountain biking at Brian Head about a month ago (no, it wasn't this sort of trip either). Until that point, I'd been running the air conditioner instead. It turns out that's what people do during the summer here in Sin City. Anyway, once the hot air was blowing, I was very displeased to detect an odor not much different from poor people smell.

"Great!" I thought to myself. "My car's heater stinks. How am I going to make it through the winter if I have to smell that for three months?"

"Wait," another part of my brain interjected. "It's probably just because the heater hasn't been used for so long. Maybe there was just some stale air in the vents."

Well, that wasn't it. I've smelled it every time I've even turned the air conditioner off and just had the vent blowing. It seems that the second part of my brain is stupid. The problem is, when I ask anybody else who rides in my car about it, they claim that they don't smell anything.

Initially I chalked this up to my super sensory abilities (Now would be a good time to tell you that I have extraordinary senses: I can smell things no one else can smell, and I once heard a bat fly into a mist net from approximately thirty yards away), or my turbo nose, as Flieswithoutwings used to call it.

Well, I haven't had to use the heater yet (our temperatures are still in the 80s), but I know the time is getting close, and I've been dreading it. I spent the last few weeks trying to figure out what I was going to do with my smelly car. I've purchased different kinds of air fresheners, all to no avail. I've been thinking about taking it in and having all the filters replaced to see if that helped. If it didn't, I was going to either have to gut the car and replace everything, or trade it in on something different.

So, you can imagine my relief when I realized that the smell was coming from my sunglasses. Or rather, my sunglass case. Apparently the case got a lot of sweat on it during the mountain biking trip, and the stale sweat has been permeating the air in my car for the last several weeks. Understandably, the smell is especially strong when I first take my sunglasses out of the case and put them on. Hence the reason I'm the only one who can smell it. (But I do still have a turbo nose.)

I'm just glad I can wash the sunglass case rather than having to go out and buy a new car.

They could not take your pride

Last night I went shopping for my Halloween costume. You might think it's a little late in the game for that, but you have no idea, I didn't even come up with a costume until yesterday afternoon. The costume idea is AWESOME (at least I think so). Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to do it right, so I just have to make do with what I can get on short notice.

I had to go to the Goodwill Superstore near my house to see if I could find some of the most critical parts, and while I was there I had to call my friend so that he could look up some details for me. I want to get this right. He was able to tell me what I needed, and then another friend of mine called (yes, I was that guy, you know, the one who walks around the thrift store talking on his cell phone the entire time). I was excited to tell him about my costume, and told him where I was trying to find the different pieces to it.

Me: I'm at the Goodwill Store.
Him: I bet that smells good.
Me: I know. I hate coming into places like this because they always stink. I may be poor, but at least I bathe.

See?! I'm not the only one in the world who associates thrift stores with the poor people smell.

Anyway, I wasn't able to get the exact costume, but as my first friend pointed out "If you and I don't remember the details of this, nobody else is going to be able to either."

My second friend pointed out that in order to get it completely right I'd probably have to go to some specialty store. But I don't want to spend a lot of money, nor do I have any more time, so I'll just stick with what I got last night.

What's the costume you ask? You'll just have to wait and see. Depending on how well it turns out I may post pictures.

That's not teen spirit

I went to the store to buy my daughter a birthday present yesterday. In the interest of time (and lack of motivation) I went to one that was close to where I work, rather than waiting until I got home, so it was sort of in the middle of the ghetto. As such, it was a little more run down than what I'm accustomed to, and full of poor people.

Now, call me a snob if you wish, but I generally try to avoid places where there are a lot of poor people. It's not that I have a lot of money, but I do have pride, so I care about my appearance. I actually take the time out of my busy schedule to shower every day. For whatever reason, poor people don't seem to like to do that (not enough money for soap?), and as a result, places where poor people shop tend to have a 'poor people smell' to them. By that, I generally mean the smell of urine, bad breath and/or B.O. That's the reason I try to avoid such places.

As I walked into the store yesterday I got a good whiff of 'poor people smell' and found myself slightly annoyed that the item I was after was going to be clear at the back of the store. That meant I would have to endure the smell for at least that much longer than if my item had been at the front. Is it really too much to ask that a store automatically know what I'm after and rotate so that the item I'm after would always be just inside the door and next to the register by the time I come in from the parking lot? I know that if it did it for everyone that would be utter chaos, so they just need to do it for me. That would certainly suffice.