VERY BAKED POTATO
With his wife out of town, a Virginia man was making it through the week relatively well. The dishes were done, the laundry was folded and the toilet was cleaned. And then it came time to cook dinner.
The man — who learned to cook in college with a roommate whose specialty was ham sandwiches — set to work on a surprisingly elegant meal: salmon, broccoli and a baked potato.
But the man’s mind was on the Olympics as he tossed the tater into the microwave. He set the timer for 15 minutes.
A little while later, the salmon, flaky and lusciously pink, was ready. The broccoli was perfect. And the potato was as hard as asphalt.
His wife explained by phone that sometimes you have to adjust the timer when you’re cooking for one.
IT PAYS TO STAND
By the time he was finally able to secure a seat on a train running along the Metro’s Blue Line, the man was but two stops from his home. Still, he thought aloud, it would be nice to rest for a few minutes.
The man was pleasantly surprised to have found a spot. He’d been riding the Metro “for years,” he joked to anyone who would listen, and this was the first time that he could remember having a seat.
Not more than two minutes later, the man was wearing the remnants of a child’s Mountain Dew. The child sitting next to the man said he got a brain freeze and consequently spilled his soft drink on the man’s suit.
“It’s OK, really,” the man told the boy and his distraught mother. “I just don’t think I’ll ever sit on one of these things ever again. I’m less of a target standing up.”
STEPPING IN IT
A District dog helped her owner realize just how much he needed a new pair of dress shoes.
The owner returned to his apartment Thursday evening after a long day at the office, disabled the security system and received the usual enthusiast greeting from his husky pup.
But that happy hello was really just a diversion, and a few seconds later, the man found his foot stuck in a large pile of poop. Seeing her owner discover her accident, the dog put on her saddest puppy eyes and whined in embarrassment.
The pooch kept her solemn expression as the man cleaned the mess off the hardwood floors. But there was a casualty: Despite much scrubbing and cleaning, the man’s leather shoes weren’t going to make it.
FURRY FRIEND
The woman heard a scream from downstairs.
She thought her sister’s scream was one of joy while watching the Olympics — although, in retrospect, that made no sense since there was an advertisement on at the time.
She walked down to the basement.
“There’s a mouse,” her sister, visiting from North Carolina, screamed at her.
She had seen the fuzzy body come out of the windowsill and rappel down the cable wire running to the TV set.
The woman, who had caught five mice over the winter, just sighed and got out her mousetrap and peanut butter.
In the morning, she discovered what she considered the worst outcome — her trap was moved and closed, but no mouse was inside.
And so, the peanut butter-and-mouse game was on for another day.
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