Odds and Ends

On the Way to the Gym
I'm on my way to the gym this morning to take my spinning class. It is a rather nasty day out. Rainy and very humid and for November rather warm.

At Rhode Island Ave. and North Capitol Street there is an accident. The police are there along with a fire truck. At first it is hard to tell what's happened. It turns out that the car involved in the accident was hit by the fire truck. I have to assume that the fire truck was on the way to a call and the person in the car couldn't be bothered to yield to the fire truck. To add to matters the car was struck on the side which means the car was traveling on the cross street in relation to the fire truck.

I hope the fire truck was traveling to a "real" emergency.

Spinning
I took a spinning class this morning. It was me and the instructor. It was a good class. It lasts an hour.

The instructor is first rate. You get a long hard workout with her class. She concentrates on building resistance over a period of time. Also coming out of the saddle for a minute at a time. Then sitting back down for a minute and then standing again. For standing she makes sure the resistance is high. The big thing is to keep the resistance at the same level once you sit down. That is not as easy as it sounds.

Diplomats Are Everywhere
With the big economic summit in town this weekend, there are police and diplomats everywhere. I could really notice the step up in the police presence when I was walking up to Tom's opening (which by the way was a big success).

This morning parking around the gym was a little tricky. Usually I can park within a couple of blocks of the gym but not today.

I got to see the Chinese delegation driving down Connecticut Ave. on the way to the White House.

I'm not sure what the summit will accomplish. It seems that developing countries are in the drivers seat as the developed nations slip into a recession. But I have to wonder if at some point the recession won't come calling on the developing countries too.

At the Grocery Store
On the way back from the gym, I stopped off at the grocery store. I had to pick up a few things and see if there were any bananas I could buy. The problem with bananas is they are either way too ripe or so green they won't get ripe for a week. The bananas were too ripe.

I got a couple of other things and headed for check out. It was Saturday morning and it was pretty busy. I used one of the self-checkout lines. They have four of them but only two were working.

I usually use the self-checkout. I will say they should work better than they do. First off home come two of them were out of commission. I think that there should be a limit on the number of items you can have in these lines. People with full charts should have to use the regular check out lines. It takes too long otherwise. Also produced should be labeled with the codes so you can scan them in quicker. I had a green pepper and had to type in the item. For some reason there was nothing under green or pepper. I ended up not getting it because I didn't want to hold up the line.

One final note. I got to add a new label to my posts this morning Obama Presidency. Pretty cool.