Sometimes Things Actually Get Better

It's too nice out to spend all day in my home office...so I took my laptop to the library. (I like to live dangerously.) I was still inside, but at least I had a nice window, and thousands of books near at hand.

Unfortunately, what the library doesn't have is food. So, when I got hungry, I decamped to a nearby Panera Bread, which offers free wi-fi. And I still have a window, although this one opens out onto a parking lot.

This Panera Bread is in an old shopping center that was upgraded a few years ago. When I was a kid, this parking lot was a barren, potholed, trash-strewn wasteland. My High School Ecology Club inherited a recycling center in this parking lot, so I spent some time here, separating recyclables. Eventually, with people dumping non-recyclable trash here, the site grew beyond what High School kids could handle, and the owner just carted everything away.

But, since the renovation, there are flowers here. There are shrubs and plantings in the medial strips. There aren't any potholes, and the trash is picked up. There's no need for a recycling center, because the local townships all have recycling programs. Sometimes things actually do get better....