genetic waste

That's essentially what one of my childhood friends describes my brother and I as. Between a family history of heart murmurs, color blindness, dyslexia, mental illness, and cancer, our friend Jeff decided that the Harlin family must simply just be a dumping ground for Darwinian used DNA rags.

Among all of that crap is my incredibly poor sense of smell, and therefore taste. For some reason, I have the worst sense of smell out of anyone I've ever met (with the exception of my brother, whose the same as I am). You can pretty much count on the fact that if you ever ask me "Hey, Jess ... do you smell that?" the answer will be "Smell what?"

That said, whenever I do smell something strong, it must really be unfreakinbelievably strong for my craptacular sniffer to pick it up. Take, for instance, the smell of downtown San Francisco this morning.

I stepped off of BART and instantly smelled something funky. I couldn't tell what it was, but I decided that it must have been the person next to me or something. The only problem is that the person next to me wasn't next to me for all that long. Not to mention, the further I went up towards the street, the stronger the funk smell got. It wasn't until I was standing outside on the street level that I finally was able to place the odor.

All of downtown San Francisco reeked of onions today.

I don't know why. Maybe it was because of the Halloween party held here last night. Maybe not. Whatever the reason, there's no denying that it was incredibly pungent. And like I said, if it was bothering genetic waste like me, it must have been driving everyone else nuts.