On the way back from an errand, I passed a young woman waiting for the bus. She is partially deaf and used to bag groceries at a small chain store that went belly up about a year ago. I hope she's okay.
For years, we had this little restaurant and bar on a corner not far from my house, and the lighted sign read, "Burger Basket $4." For maybe five years, that message never changed--at least until the place started having Karaoke Night--so my family and I always joked about it. But earlier this year, it went under and the place was torn down, leaving only the little coffee hut on the same property. (No one ever tears down a coffee drive-thru place in the Pacific Northwest.)
Now there's a new building up, and the first construction worker I talked to couldn't tell me what kind of place it will be, although when I started chatting with a second construction worker (who had no info, either), I could visualize this structure as a 7-Eleven. I have those kind of nightmares, you know. A third worker on the site did know what was being constructed there. "It's a 7-Eleven," he informed me. "A 7-Eleven," I answered. "Great."