How to account for this? I am driving down I-287, windows down, wind snatching my hair all around, tape player howling, when suddenly comes this overpowering and unmistakable scent. How can this be? It's not skunk. It's not food. It's not garlic a la Gilroy, California. It's BO. There is the horrible aroma of unwashed armpits, and they ain't mine. It's pervasive and persistent, and goes on for a full minute and a half. What the hell?
     Is there somehow one really horrible smelling person in Metuchen? Are they having some kind of festival that features (why??!!) a competitive stink-off? Have they herded up all the bad smelling people in town in preparation to ship them off or something? Is there a busload of hygeine protesters just now traveling down the highway, and I'm in their wake? Is there some kind of plant that mimics this smell and has gone rampant along the roadside?

     For the second time in as many days, the change in my door handle in the van has exactly equalled the 35¢ needed for the Asbury Park toll as I have approached it. When I receive change, I throw the silver coins into the door handle, and the pennies into the door map pocket. But of all the amounts and combinations of coin possible, for two days there was precisely the amount of the toll left. That is amazing.
     I noticed recently, while going through the "Cash Receipts" lane of the tolls, the manned one for people who don't have exact change, token, or EZPass, that the toll taker had stuck a magic marker and cardboard sign to his booth. It said, "This is NOT the exact change or token lane!!!"
     Uhm, isn't this a bit petty? I mean, sometimes the exact change and token lanes are so tightly packed that I can't even get into them. What huge offense am I committing to hand my 35¢ to a human instead of dropping it into the machine? How is this an inconveniece for anybody? The toll taker is not required to make change. The people in the machine operated lines don't have to tolerate my trying to squeeze in. There is no law (as far as I know) that says a toll taker may not take exact change rather than inexact change. Is it really more reprehensible to hand them a quarter and a dime rather than two quarters? I don't get it. Seems like it blocks up the progress of things more to be so inflexible, causing more danger of traffic jam and such. If I could even stand New Jersey 101.5, the all talk all over the state radio station, I would call and gripe. But those people irritate me even more than the toll taker does.