A couple a things...

I'm at the gym and the gal next to me is blowing her nose and then casually tossing the used tissues onto the floor around her machine. Quite a pile had accumulated. Honestly, I found this all rather gross. At the market, a lane system guided by a TV screen has been established at checkout. There are three lanes, and on the screen are three, vertically-oriented colored rectangles in which numbers appear directing customers towards the available registers. Doesn't it seem fairly evident that if you're in the left lane, you follow the colored box farthest to the left, middle lane follows the middle box, and so forth? Pretty much every time I'm checking out, someone seems either confused or not to care, and one cashier has to then leave his/her station to direct the traffic. At times, full on bickering ensues. Maybe I'm a visual learner or something, but the system seems pretty basic and self-explanatory. Hmm.

I'm still mourning the passing of Christopher Hitchens. If you admired him too, the Feb issue of Vanity Fair has a wonderful tribute written by Salman Rushdie.