Power of Smell

I started off NaNoWriMo with a bang, and then I had that work trip, and then...well, I was trying to focus on the 5k training, and then...oh, I don't know. I ended up neglecting it for almost 2 weeks.

I'm at 15,000 words right now, which isn't necessarily bad - except that I have 35,000 words to go in 12 days.  Ummmph.

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I love my sense of smell. I'm a sniffer of everything. My favorite is an old work phone directory that smells like donuts for some reason. If I flip through it really fast, I still get a whiff of donuts. The directory is from 2005 and updated each year, so I don't "need" to keep this relic from 2005. Needless to say, I kept it for the smell. I still dig it out of my desk and fan it out occasionally just for the hit of donut smell.

Being so ultra sensitive to smells also has its downsides. Especially at work, I can literally tell who has been in the hall based on the scent left behind. X's perfume, Y's smell, Z's gum. It's a bit bizarre, and I try not to announce my suspicions because - well - it can be a bit on the creepy side, and I do wonder if I'm part werewolf (they have the good sniffer, right?).

This week I was doing the 5k route. It is cold out (high 30s/low 40s). I really hate the longest part of the 5k route because it is so pedestrian un-friendly. It's a curvy road, one lane each way, with no sidewalks and no streetlights. The road itself isn't well tended to, and there are ditches about one centimeter away from where a car would pass. The best time to run to avoid being squashed by a car is at night because at least you may get a little bit of warning if their headlights are on. However, it becomes somewhat of a hazard if you see that a car is coming at you, and you try to move out of the way and fall into the ditch. On the other hand, you can see the ditches if you do the route in the daylight, but if your headphones are on, you don't get much warning about a car coming at you. So really it's a competing force: would you rather a twisted ankle from falling into a ditch or would you rather being squashed by a car? I tend to choose the twisted ankle threat and run at night.

Sorry, I digressed. Honestly, it's a horribly crappy route. They better close the road completely for the 5k.

As I was saying, I was running/walking the route this past week. A car drives by. It's one of those souped up Japanese cars with a stupid spoiler on the back. (What is the purpose of a spoiler anyway?) I wasn't really paying attention, so I forget if it was a Nissan Sentra or a Subaru. Anyway, the car zooms by with the music blaring and the passenger window rolled down. After the car passed, I got this whiff of a heavy smell. Cologne. Lots and lots of cologne.I didn't know you could smell cologne from outside of a car when it was practically freezing.

You know you're wearing too much cologne when you can be smelled by someone on the side of the road while you're driving by in the late fall.

Can you imagine the poor girl who has to smell him? That must be why the windows were rolled down. Poor girl couldn't breathe with that suffocating smell.

It's sexy to smell someone from 2-3 feet away. 50 feet away? Not so sexy.