This blog is the place where I go to wonder a few things, so here’s what I have stuck in my craw at the moment.
--Enterprise Rent a Car. Maybe they’ve been doing more of their advertising lately, but the more I look at their tagline (which is “We’ll pick you up!), the more this makes me wonder—is this enough of a value proposition to warrant making it the tagline for the entire company? How many times in your adult life have you needed to be PICKED UP in a rental car? I have been driving for 20+ years, have rented probably hundreds of cars for business and other travel purposes, have even rented cars in foreign countries, and not one time have I ever needed to be picked up. Don’t you usually just rent cars at the airport, where a pickup is unnecessary because you either walk to the car or you’re taken in one of those shuttles? Maybe I’m just a statistical anomaly and not relevant to the data for Enterprise, but I might even venture to say that if I did need to be picked up, I would take a cab to a cheaper car rental place.
--Personalized license plates. I have long had this one on my list as something I just don’t understand, and then the other day I saw one that pushed me over the edge: 42WALNUT. Like—really? Personalized license plates require extra paperwork and fees. 42 WALNUT was important enough to someone that they chose to voluntarily spend more time and money at the DMV? This is baffling to me. Others that I have seen/ photographed/ noticed on a friend’s Facebook page (he also wonders this and photographs the funny ones): “THEBOOK,” “GUTSDOCTOR,” and “ALAWYER.” I see no logical reason for these vanity plates. It’s not like your phone number is in there, so even if I happen to need a book, or a guts doctor, or a lawyer, or a 42 Walnut, there is no way for me to get in touch with you, clever license plate holder. You know it's true.
--This is more of a “wow, we found a solution for this problem” type of thing, but I absolutely had to share it with you. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but my husband is like, a total ATHLETE now. He ran the NY Marathon last year, and this year he did the NY Triathlon, and now he’s training for another marathon. The result of all this is that he looks awesome and feels great about himself and we’re all very proud of him and OH MY GOD HIS RUNNING SHOES SMELL SO BAD. You guys, I’m not even kidding, these shoes are not just stinky. They are medical-grade stinky. They are so stinky they are worrisome, like you would question the health of a person with shoes that smell that bad. I have written of this stinkiness before, in this post called "Operation Stink" when I told you all about how I BOILED HIS GYM CLOTHES, then soaked them in Oxyclean, then washed them, and that’s what I was trying to do with his shows, and still, oh my God, the stink.
Then, no lie, I bought this product, and because of magical magical science, they are about 80% less crazy stinky. It’s not often that you buy a product and it actually does what you hope it will do, but if you buy “Febreze EXTREME SPORTS” because you have some extreme smells, in fact, they will make your Exorcist Stinky Gym shoes smell better, and that is the truth. In fact, if you'll go back and re-read that post about the stinky gym clothes, I actually say "there should be a product for extreme stink," and NOW THERE IS. Is this because of my blog? Let's say it is.
Please note that I am training to run the half-marathon (with my dad) when Stephan runs his next marathon (September in Maine), and my shoes smell like normal shoes.
