The McDonald's menu has the regular sandwiches (a word which, considering the context, I must protest) on one sign and the Value Meals on another. It is a totally unsavy waste of sign space. Why not list the single sandwich followed by two prices, columnarly aligned, for a la carte and Valu Meal respectively?

Parking in the Sutter Stockton Garage for 8 Days: Terrified by the prospect of having to fork over the full $160, Leah suggested I pretend to have lost my ticket and see whether I could get away with paying only the $20 lost-ticket rate.

Sadly, it does not work this way. First they make you drive your car down to 2nd floor main office. Then they check your plates against this big chart with dozens of tiny, little numbers. And then they do the math. I guess the security guards must go around making notes of suspicious, overnight parkers but I can't tell if they start on the first day or if it takes them a while to catch on. The important thing is that I managed to bail the car out for a mere $60 -- whether thanks to clerical oversight or my charming smile, lying certainly didn't cost me anything.

My Pete's Coffee credit card got stuck in the little box the other day. At the Bush/Battery Pete's the counter staff puts the card in for you so it wasn't even my fault. While they were struggling to get the card out I jokingly suggested that they reboot. Turns out this is The Procedure. In any case, the line was held up for at least three minutes (i.e., a long time).

During The Incident, this short guy behind me wearing the requisite downtown drag turns to his similarly attired friend, gestures towards the jammed card reading device and says, "Hey, isn't that your company?" And the other guys says, "Damn right. Maybe I should revise the estimates." I kid you not. This really happened. Stock broker research analysts dorks.