On Friday morning I decided to use ZipCar for the first time. It's a car rental service by the hour, similar to City Car Share. The cars are parked a block from my house so it's quite convenient to use for grocery shopping and such. Life is better when you don't have to schlep home six heavy bags (I mostly eat out of cans) on the bus.
I went to Safeway and decided that since I was there, I would also rent a Rug Doctor to steam clean my filthy, ugly brown shag carpet. Signing it out took some time and as I only had the car for an hour, I had to run down the aisles with my cart grabbing things off the shelves as fast as possible. I had less than 20 minutes left when I got to the cashier, who was having a lovely conversation with the woman in front of me about her baby.
Fans, have you noticed that all conversations about babies go like this:
"Oh what a beautiful baby! How old is she/he?"
"152.87563 days!"
"What's his/her name?"
"Britney"
"Hiiii Britney! Do you like the grocery store/shopping with mommy/this elevator?
Oh she/he is really beautiful."
"Thanks, goodbye."
It's the same thing with dogs.
"Oh what a pretty dog. Is she/he an Alaskan Goatfetcher?"
'No, an Egyptian Watercrest."
"Oh. How old is she/he?"
"About six months."
"What's his/her name?"
"Her name is Mitsy."
"Hiii Mitsy! Do you like the park/going for a walk/this restaurant? Oh what a good dog."
"Thanks, goodbye."
Anyway, this was eating up my rental car time and I was not happy about it. Once the retarded lady bagged up the groceries I paid, ran with the cart to the car, tossed the food in the back, and sped home. I only had time to throw the bags inside the outer door of my building, not bring them into my apartment. I got back in the car and made it to the rental spot with four minutes to spare.
The next several hours were a whirlwind of cleaning, vacuuming, and moving furniture around to steam clean. I was sweating like a wet pig.
I had to meet Rachael and Chuck at Chow for dinner, so at 7PM I turned the heat in my apartment up to 80 to help the carpet dry and went to meet the kids. Rachael had just returned from a two-week trip to New Zealand. Chuck had returned that morning from a month-long trip to several countries in Asia. I had recently been to Potrero Hill, so we had a lot of globe-trotting adventures to talk about.
After dinner I returned home, where upon opening the door a burst of hot Rug Doctor Shampoo smelling steam was sucked outside and into my face. It was like a chemical sauna in there, but at least the rug was drying. At about midnight, I cleaned the carpet a second time. I woke up at eight in the morning to do it again, and a fourth time at noon. All the while I was in my underwear dying from the heat. Even on the fourth pass, the water was coming up dirty from the steam cleaner, but I had to get the thing back to Safeway.
I picked up Rich the Bitch in the ZipCar on the way and we ran errands that resulted in returning the car with one minute to spare. When you live in San Francisco long enough, getting places on time becomes stressful.
I returned to my hot, wet apartment and hung out for the day. That evening I met Rich and Eric for dinner to celebrate Rich the Bitch's birthday. We had pizza, then cake and ice cream for dessert. All the best foods are teenager foods.
Afterwards, I stopped into the Pilsner for a drink. Lately I've been going out and not running into anybody, which is rather sucky when you're as popular as I am, but this night I hung out with four different groups of people I knew there. I stayed out late because there is only so much chemical carpet fumes one can tolerate in a weekend.
Now it's Sunday, I'm hungover, the carpet still isn't totally dry so I'll have to spend another day sweating indoors, and I haven't done any work since Thursday. The thing that sucks about being productive is that you don't have time to get anything done.