I really don’t like exercising in the morning but due to other things going on, I was basically forced in to running this morning. It was a typical run. It was hot by 8am. It was humid. As I ran I noticed all the typical morning activity in the village. Cars running red lights, cig stubs being thrown out of cars that did choose to stop, a new slew of broken glass chunks around the Corner due to youth getting drunk, and all the other excitement of a new day.

The scene that summed up the run is when I went by a free clinic. A woman was sitting at the bus stop in front of it. She was about 7 or 8 months pregnant, and her daughter was sitting by her side. The daughter was probably 3 or 4. As I jogged past she was sucking away on that lovely thing called a cigarette. Puff. Puff. Mmm. Gotta love them cigs. I guess the newborn baby will be good and healthy. I’ll bet the daughter will be addicted by the time she is 12.

I wonder what the clinic told her. I wonder if they told her to stop smoking.

Let’s throw a Waldoid in here. Virginia the #2 state in tobacco production. True or false. As it turns out, that is false. Virginia is only #6. I’m sure they want to get back up in the rankings, just like Charlottesville does in the city ranking (since they are entirely missing from the top 100). Can you name 100 cities that are better than C-Ville? It seems others have no problems.

The scene of the pregnant lady with a daughter smoking away seemed So Very Virginia.*
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*So Very Virginia was ranked the 2nd best city slogan in the entire country and it belongs to C-Ville. Unfortunately, no one in the village had ever heard of it before. A few days ago the URL redirected to the C-Ville Tourism site, but now it just loads that site. It seems to have the slogan on there with the lovely TM symbol next to it. I wish I’d trademarked that so I could use that as a total slam against anything backward. Oh wait…I still can…and I think I will.

Speaking of which, check out this picture called Virginia Slim:

(more about the photographer).