thursday july 24

today i got to an apartment showing a little early and had to make small talk outside with the landlord's husband while someone else looked at the place. although i'm no small-talk expert to begin with, this was a particularly difficult conversation for me, since it seemed like all he wanted to talk about was cars. i'm not one of those guys who knows things about cars, so the discussion was mostly one-sided, with me nodding and grunting a lot. finally, when he asked me what i did for a living, i was excited at the opportunity to turn the topic of conversation to football. within 20 seconds though, he had declared that his favorite team was the detroit lions and somehow managed to bring the conversation back around to cars by extensively discussing the lions' owners (the ford family).