Excitement and then some: Who says you can’t have fun in a small town? Even one with our unusual urban amenities (bus service, art galleries, movies, good restaurants, etc.). Certainly not me. 

I sometimes get calls from friends down in San Francisco making funnies like, “What’s your ZIP code up there, E-I-E-I-O?”

You can create your own entertainment in a nonurban setting. I tell my big-city peeps that fun abounds here if you just look for it. Here are just a few of the exciting local options that float my boat: 

• Taking a tour of my neighbors’ linen closets.

• Watching the trucks unload down at Safeway.

• Buying a round-trip ticket on the ferry just to work the jigsaw puzzles. 

• Going into Doc’s and asking if there are any cardiologists or neurologists available. 

• Heading down to North Beach on Friday nights to wave at passing cruise ships. 

• Counting Priuses in the Food Co-op parking lot.

• Attending a White People for Diversity rally. (Props to reader Seth Leighton for that one.) 

• Picking the apples from a neighbor’s tree and delivering them to her door. (Leighton again.) 

• Going to Art Walk and asking strangers if their name is Art.

• Bringing a bottle of Three Buck Chuck into the most expensive restaurant in town and paying the corkage fee.

• Going up to Les Schwab and watching tire rotations.

• Going to the hospital cafeteria and asking if they serve Slim Jims. 

• Checking that the Wi-Fi works by sending emails to myself from various locations around town. 

• Driving down to the airport to watch the planes land.

• Going up to the post office and asking when the Guns N’ Roses stamp will be issued. (There’s already a Jimi Hendrix stamp.) 

• Buying a ticket to The Rose Theatre so you can hang out in the lobby and read their copy of The New York Times. 

• Getting an oil change every time you make the long drive over to Sequim to get free food samples at Costco. 

• Donating copies of the National Enquirer to the Carnegie Library for its periodical section.

• Swallowing everything your dentist puts in your mouth. 

• Doing earthquake preparedness drills by sleeping in your doorway.

• Going through the automated car wash just to see all the multicolored streams of water. (“Oh, wow ... double rainbow!”)

• Going on ride-alongs with meter readers.

• Going to the golf course and yelling, “In the hole!” after each golfer putts. 

• Picking up wet phone books under mailboxes and delivering them to the property owners (because they must not have known they were there).

• Eating at bait and tackle shops because sushi is too expensive.

• Listing your neighbor’s house on Airbnb. (Leighton again.) 

• Asking a local tree surgeon what kind of anesthetic he uses. 

• Watching the Senate USDA Meat Inspection Committee hearings on C-SPAN. 

• Going out to The Palindrome and announcing, “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!” Or, even better, “Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog.”

Got some more of your own? Email them to me. And put “PT Excitement” in the subject line.  

Port Townsend resident Bill Mann has been a humor columnist for USA and CBS MarketWatch. He’s always looking for funny items – and funny people. Email him at newsmann9@gmail.com.