My intention to spend the day getting a flying start on the next phase of my work projects at Starbucks in Laurelhurst was thwarted by the fact that the power adapter on my seven-month-old Macbook Air had gone pear-shaped, as they say in Britain.
At the Jupiter Hotel I had noticed that the machine wasn't charging properly and saw that the sheath on the adapter cord had somehow ripped open. I found I could get it to charge if the cord was in just the right position, propped up by pillows and blankets in a delicate fashion. It wasn't such a big deal then, since I was on vacation, but now that I was back at work, it was a very undesirable situation. Moreover it seemed to be getting rapidly harder to position to cord to make it charge. I realized that replacing it was a top priority.
So I cut short the Starbucks session. My destination that night was Salem, so I booked a cheap room off the Interstate before leaving the coffeeshop. Then I looked up the location of the various Apple stores in the Portland area. There was one listed in Tualatin, just off I-5, right along my route.
After fighting my way through the maze of Portland to get onto the freeway (from Laurelhurst I finally got on the entrance ramp on the other side of the river), and then creeping along the freeway in the constant rush hour Portland traffic (the highways here really are a disgrace), I finally hit the stride of full speed right as I was approaching the area where the Apple store was located.
But as I always seem to around here, I got off at the wrong exit---the one for 99W in Tigard. I realized I had made a mistake but around here, turning around to get back on the freeway is sometimes an epic adventure. There was a Carl's Jr. right off the exit on 99W, and since it was lunchtime, I decided just to take a breather from traffic and duck in for a cheeseburger.
Carl's Jr. was one of my go-to places for lunch when I was in California, but I hadn't been inside one in a while. The one in Tigard turned out to be a brand new franchise, with nice interior decor and television screens mounted from the ceiling. After I ordered my burger (no fries or drink, as always), I sat at one of the tall tables, looking out over the green hills of Tigard. My attention was inevitably drawn to the video screens. It was impossible to avoid them.
The screens were showing an in-house corporate programming from Carl's Jr, with promotions interspersed with fluff-piece lifestyle features of general interest, and music videos. It was completely unnecessary as a distraction form the meal, but harmless.
Well, almost harmless. As I watching it, a short fluff feature came on, the subject of which was how women can remove excess lipstick from their lips, while putting on make up. The technique the offered was illustrated by an attractive young woman with full lips slathered in red. With her head turned sideways to the camera, she put her index finger into her mouth and slowly drew it out of lips.
WTF? Isn't this supposed to be a family restaurant? In the 1990s's the woman's presentation was the kind of thing one would see in a strip club advertisement. Now I was right in face as a fast food place in the bright sunshine of the lunch hour.
I wanted to look around at anyone else watching, but there was no one else watching. So I averted my eyes and ignored the screen, looking out instead to the southwest, over the hills of Tigard and beyond, because I had no other choice but to do that. Then I got in my car and somehow managed to cut across four lanes of busy traffic without an accident and get back on the Interstate.
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