Rohr relaxation…
3 minute read
June 22, 2006, 2:48 AM
I went to Washington DC on Tuesday, and it was a fairly typical “regular” trip. I got in right on time, parked at Vienna, and then the main mission this time was to check on some jobs I’d applied for. I also paid a visit to my friend Tristan and then paid a visit to Pentagon City.
On the Red Line en route to Rockville, I encountered a person that knows how to relax on a Rohr train:
She’s got the right foot up on the pole, and the left foot resting on the right leg. And she’s on the phone. Note that the phone she’s got is the same kind that I used to have before I upgraded last month.
All in all, I had fun. I’m just glad that I was able to park at Vienna this time. On my June 6 trip, every legal parking space at Vienna was full, meaning I couldn’t park there if I did not want to get a ticket or get towed. So on that trip, I parked at West Falls Church. This time, I got to park at Vienna, albeit in the South Garage. But the South Garage is still Vienna, so I’m not too worried. And I’m also not too surprised that I had to take the South Garage. Half of the North Garage’s “guaranteed” spaces that I park in after they open up at 10 AM are closed due to the ongoing parking garage rehabilitation, so it’s understandable. I ended up parking in the South Garage’s “guaranteed” spaces, so it worked out in the end.
And then on the way home, I found out that the Sheetz in Haymarket’s going to get remodeled (again) to add a Sheetz Brothers Coffee. That will also involve closing the store for two days to do a lot of rewiring, from what I’m told. But it will be nice to have the gourmet coffee in Haymarket. By then, since I’m sometimes starting to droop by that point in the day (I usually get to the Sheetz in Haymarket between 12:30 and 1:00 in the morning on the return trip), having fancy coffee will be handy.
Then at the Wal-Mart in Woodstock, after shopping, I played Stacker, which is in the vestibule at the grocery entrance. Since they’d put it in back in January or February, I’d been trying to win the iPod that had been hanging there.
Now to play Stacker, you’re lining up a group of blocks. You start with three blocks that you have to position. Then you have to stack a row of blocks directly on top of it (hence the name). If you miss a block but others landed properly, you lose the ones that missed, and continue. Land no blocks properly, and the game is over immediately, and the machine says, “Oh, no! Uh-oh… game over!”
There are two prize rows, each highlighted in white. The “minor prize” row is on the 11th row. When you hit that row, the game says, “consolation prize!” and if you choose to stop there, you get some junky little trinket. If you keep going, you complete four more rows to hit the top row, marked “major prize”. Those prizes are nice. There’s a low-end digital camera, a prepaid cell phone, an iPod, etc. Pretty nice stuff that costs significantly more than the 50¢ it costs to play Stacker.
Stacker’s play board, with a perfect game shown on it, looks like this:
So why do I mention this? Because of the irony of it. Mom got me a 2 GB iPod Nano for my birthday, which I have thoroughly enjoyed. And now that I have the iPod, and I was playing Stacker just for the heck of it, I finally hit the “major prize” level and won a big prize. And of the four big prizes to choose from, the only thing worthwhile was the iPod. So now I have two iPods. I have my “real” iPod (the Nano), and now I have a 512 MB iPod shuffle. That thing costs almost $70 retail, and I managed to get it for only 50¢. And the ironic thing is that I only got it after I already owned an iPod.
So there you go. My next trips to DC will be June 28 and July 4.
Web site: An article about the iPod...
Song: "Save the Last Email for Strong Bad"
Quote: "How ironic..." - Regarding the iPod win
Categories: DC trips, Video games, WMATA