What you do on a Friday night

The Pilot* in Benton, AR is within walking distance of a shopping center. This is a rare gift.

Not a mall. That's a really rare gift. But a Target and a Best Buy and a Petco and a few other stores. That's enough. Window shopping is as good a way to pass the time as many.

I've mentioned the difference between seeing the world and visiting it. It's a good thing window-shopping and people-watching can entertain me.

I don't bring my guitar—my wife gave it to me. At first I feared rough handling. Now I fear theft. Even with my present financial status, laptops are more expendable than expensive gifts from your wife.

Laptops are pretty common among truckers these days. And a lot of truck stops have wi-fi (though it's usually not free. Not yet, anyway.) WORLD OF WARCRAFT and its rivals take up a fair bit of truck-stop bandwidth. I usually write, myself. Each to his own.

Then there's satellite radio, of course. Just about any kind of music you care to name, anywhere you want. Or sports. Or talk. Or almost anything else. My trainer liked old-time radio plays. Me, too—sometimes I write them. But weird as it may seem, I don't often listen to them as I drive. Or music. Or much of anything else. I prefer to concentrate on my driving. Or on my listening. Both at once? No, thanks.

So I read. I write. I people-watch. I window-shop. And I probably think too much.

I certainly talk too much. I think I'll stop now. G'nite.
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*A truck stop chain. It qualifies as a “fuel-and-forget” type, but there are a lot of them, and they're usually pretty well run.