vituperation

June 29, 2002

Congratulations are in order for reader Ann, who was randomly selected from all the correct emails that told me the picture from Wednesday was Ivan Doroschuk, lead singer for Men Without Hats.

And yes, Jenn (another correct entry), it is sad that you knew who it was. [insert wink and smile here]

The extra clues hidden in the contest text, if you’re interested, were the specific mention of Canadians (Ivan is from Canada) and the "You can guess if you want to, or you can try and use your mind", which was a psuedo-parody of the line "We can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind," the opening line from the 1983 hit Safety Dance.

One of the finest songs ever, in my book.

So I got up this morning to go for my Saturday run -

On a side note here, a couple of weeks ago I changed my workout routine to being 60-90 minutes of intense weight training on Mondays / Wednesdays / Fridays and cardio training only on Tuesdays / Thursdays / Saturdays (yes, I know I need to fix that where it’s posted elsewhere), and I must say, there’s something to be said for lightening up on the workouts. Not only has my strength shot up - in just two weeks! - but so has my endurance.

Matter of fact, since I’m only cardio training three days a week now, I have no problems running the entire 2.5 miles every time, so I guess I’m going to ease it on up to about 4 miles of running each time. Goodbye walkjogging, hello jogging.

- something I definitely needed because I was still feeling uber-stuffed from eating

That’s a big bowl, by the way, not a little cereal bowl.
If you look closely, you can also see the edge of a pint
of Ben and Jerry’s "New York Super Fudge Chunk",
which I barely touched because the brownies filled me up so much.

a couple of Fred-made chocolate chunk pecan brownies last night.

For those who don’t know, Robyn and I tend to eat junky foods on Fridays, and eat ‘clean’ the rest of the week. There was a time when we went at these Fridays with reckless abandon, but recently we’ve eased way back because of how crappy the junk food makes us feel. For example, the only unusual stuff I had yesterday was a cinnamon roll early in the morning, pizza (which we didn’t even come close to finishing) at dinner, and the brownies / ice cream last night. And still had raging heartburn when I got up this morning, dammit.

As I left my house, exiting through the backyard and the gate as to not raise the garage door and wake Robyn, I saw a car driving erratically down the circle, coming toward me. I thought it was going to turn into one of the nearby driveways - we live in a cul-de-sac - so I wandered on down my driveway, watching it. It didn’t turn, it just cruised slowly into the circle. As it followed the curve in front of my house, a clear plastic cup flew out of the window and splatted on the pavement, spraying liquid.

Fucking teenagers.

The car continued on through the circle, until its tail end was facing me, then it stopped. And sat there. Approaching the end of my driveway, unsure of what to do and hoping Suburbia wasn’t about to have its first drive-by shooting, I started jogging.

The car sped away.

My run was uneventful. I listened to the last cassette of Pop Goes the Weasel (hey, Men Without Hats has a CD titled Pop Goes the World [which is totally awesome], now that I think about it), I sweated, and I pounded the pavement. In my head, I bitched at myself about my heartburn.

When I got to the end of my circle, I stopped running. It’s about a tenth of a mile from the end of our circle to our house, which is perfect for a post-run cooldown. As I walked - still listening, sweating, and cursing my heartburn - I looked around, like I always do. When I was just three or four houses away from my own, I spotted something unusual lying on the sidewalk to my right. Something out of place in my yuppie neighborhood. Something that had a very familiar look to it, from my youth.

A Ziploc baggie, which wasn’t empty.

The actual baggie. Yes, I took a picture. I’m like that.

I picked it up and continued to my house, pausing at the end of my driveway to get the cup that had been tossed from the window of the car at the start of my run. I looked around nervously for cops, hoping I hadn’t stumbled into some early-morning sting operation. There were no cops to be seen.

Inside the house, I examined the bag closely and found that it wasn’t what I originally thought it was. It was mostly tobacco, with some cigarette butts, a couple of cigar wrappers, and several marijuana stems and seeds (you can actually see some of the seeds in the picture above, right in the middle of the bottom of the bag) scattered throughout. I woke Robyn up to show it to her - Miz Poo was loving the smell coming off the bag, I might add - then went back downstairs and called the police to see what they wanted me to do with it.

Citizen Fred, I am.

The police opted to send a squad car by to pick it up (I suggested I could just flush it, but they didn’t seem to like that idea) and after I hung up the phone, I went outside to wait. He was there in less than five minutes.

I felt like I was on Cops while he poked and prodded the bag on the back of his squad car, shining his light at it, smelling it, and jiggling the contents around. He agreed with my original assessment that someone had emptied the tobacco out of some cigars and cigarettes, then refilled them with pot (what kind of cheap-ass kids today can’t just buy some rolling papers? Jeez), leaving the detritus of tobacco, wrappers, seeds, and stems lying on the sidewalk to be found by me.

Being the logical type, I told him about the oddly-behaving car I’d seen when I first came out for my run. Since I’m also very observant, I was able to tell him the car was a "dark sedan". Probably they’ve already arrested the perpetrators.

It started to rain, so he quickly got my personal information - birth date, phone number, and house number - then left. I went back inside and peeked out. He spent a couple of minutes down where I found the baggie, looking around.

I don’t know if he found anything else.

Know what rocks? My wife has to make hair appointments about four years in advance. Me? I called my guy at 9:40 this morning, and he asked if I could be there at ten. We settled on 10:15, because I needed to finish this entry and have the rest of my coffee.

Since it’s now 10:02, I’m gone. Have a great rest of the weekend.