Joel+Stroud

 I woke up like I do every Saturday for the past six years; up at 7:15 am, no alarm, girlfriend laying next to me, and my dog sleeping at my feet. As I slowly crawl out of bed trying not to disturb Summer, my girlfriend, or Fido, my Border Collie. I jump into the shower, wash myself, then quickly get out and dress myself in an AutoFit shirt (its this shirt that fits itself to your body) and my normal dark blue jeans and white socks. After brushing my teeth I hover my hand over the light sensor to undim the the window on the far side of the room letting in fresh, bright sunlight and revealing the city in which I have lived my entire life, Manhattan. Fido awakes due to the added light and jumps off the bed to come and give me a “good morning” lick on the face. Both me and Fido walk to the window to look out at the massive city of huge, pure white skyscrapers; and the clean and moderately busy streets far below. I look over my shoulder to see Summer still sleeping. I watch her curled up under the comfortable, white comforter and know in my mind how lucky I am to have someone in my life as wonderful as she is. I walk out of the single bedroom in the apartment through the living room, swiping my hand again over another light sensor undimming the window and allowing light to come in to the kitchen. Fido followed close behind me rushing over to his food bowl wanting his breakfast so I sift through the cabinets to get his dog food and fill his bowl the usual one cup amount of food. After feeding Fido I figure I’ll make breakfast for Summer and myself; after digging through our refrigerator I pull out a carton of eggs and a gallon of orange juice. As I walk past the stove I slide my finger along the touch slider to turn on one of the burners. I grab a pan that I believe would work well in cooking some eggs and grab the loaf of bread as I walk back to the stove. I rest the pan on the burner that is already getting hot and is glowing red and stick for pieces of bread into the toaster to quickly make some toaster. On my way to the toaster I quickly reach into the fridge and grab a stick of butter that I forgot to get the first time at the fridge. I rest the butter next to the toaster so I don’t miss place it as I crack two eggs into the pan, after cracking the eggs I grab us plates from the cabinet just t o the left of me and get each of us a fork. As the smell of eggs fill the house it awakes Summer and she comes walking out of the bedroom into the kitchen right as I place the eggs, one for each plate, onto our own plates. As the toast pops up I quickly butter them so the butter melts and soaks into them and give each of us two pieces of toast, also pouring a glass of orange juice for each of us. Before either of us takes a bite Summer kisses me on the cheek and says “Good morning” “Good morning to you as well” I say in response. We eat our breakfast quickly and quietly enjoying the morning light and peacefulness of the outside world. “I’m going to go grocery shopping later today and I might stop and look at some clothes if you’d like to join me” says Summer. I respond with “Ya, I’ll come with” Quickly after finishing up breakfast Summer gets into the shower and I begin to lounge in the living room. I turn on the 32in. television we have hanging on our wall and change the channel to the news. I listen as the weather man comes on to tell us about the weather today.  “Today on June 12, 2564”, they commonly said the date out loud just in case you hadn’t check it yet, “it is going to be a nice warm day full of sun and cool breezes. We can expect to have the nice weather stick around for a couple of days, so go outside and enjoy it while it lasts.” says the weather man. After Summer gets out of the shower and finishes her hour long ritual to get ready to leave the house we take the elevator down the 132 floors it takes to get from our floor to the ground floor. We live about a little over half way up our building called the “Grand Hotel” because its the biggest hotel in all of Manhattan with a total of 220 floors, 3 indoor pools, 1 outdoor pool, and on the ground floor a couple little fast food places to grab a quick bite to eat. Once arriving at the ground floor we walk out of the elevator along with the three other members were picked up on our way down. We walk toward the side exit that leads to the parking garage and head to the elevator to go up four floors and find our silver Nissan.I had bought this car a couple years back, it was a four door silver hybrid like car that ran off solar power. I got in the drivers side and Summer gets into the passenger seat, we buckled up, and I turned on the ignition to bring life to the semi older car. After manually pulling out of the parking garage I set the coordinates into the cars main frame and the auto pilot activated. Summer and I talked about how we slept and if we should make plans later tonight while the car drove us to the food market. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After arriving at the food market I began to follow Summer in between the isles not knowing what she wanted to get. We got a lot of the basics being: milk, bread, cereal, deli meats, ground beef, vegetables, and a bunch of other food I didn’t pay attention to. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I seemed to blankly be walking through the store not realizing that I was doing it until Summer broke me out of my trance. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Are you ok?” she asked. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Ya, sorry just thinking” I said with a grin on my face. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“How lucky I am to have you as my girlfriend” leaning toward her to kiss her. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After the quick kiss I returned to my normal self and kept walking around watching Summer fill the cart that she had picked out. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After checking out we headed across the street to this new clothing store that Summer had wanted to look at for about a week now. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The store was called “Express Yourself” apparently because it had a variety of different styles of clothing. As Summer walked around looking for new clothes I followed behind her once again returning to my thoughts because shopping wasn’t my favorite thing to do. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I began to think about how when I first met Summer how I thought she was way out of my league (and still believe that), and our first date, and a lot of memories we have made along the way. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After about an hour of shopping Summer had picked out a few sets of clothes and we went to check out. It was about noon at this time so I offered lunch: <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Hey, do you want to go get some lunch?”. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Ya, what did you have in mind?”. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“There’s this new Italian restaurant downtown, if that sounds good to you?”. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“That sounds good, lets go there”. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So we got in the car and found the restaurant on the GPS and let the car take us there. We sat and listened to the radio for most of the ride occasionally commenting on something we saw as we dove by. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We got to “All Italian” about twenty minutes later and were seated fairly quickly for it being new. Summer and I agreed on a thin crusted pizza with an Alfredo sauce and cheese topping to share. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Throughout lunch I listened to Summer catch me up on what was new at her work and gossip that had been spreading around the work place. Summer works as the assistant secretary at this big company named “Intelli-Corps”. They work on advancements in the modern world to try and create a more efficient and intelligent future. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After talking and eating lunch we both agree to head back home and relax for a bit. We both head to the car and I resume my position as driver and after we both get in the car I set in the co-ordinates for our apartment building. There was little talk on the drive home, with both of us having full stomachs and enjoying the radio station that was on we just relaxed and enjoyed the music.