Month: September 2009

Just How Many Variations Are Enough?

First there was the regular sized grocery cart. Well not actually the first, that was really a folding basket carrier patented in 1948, let’s say original modern shopping cart. Next probably came those small plastic hand baskets, perfect for those 10 items or less shoppers.

The next variation was the ones that have a slightly smaller basket which sacrifice grocery space for a plastic toy car in front to place the kiddies.

When our newest Kroger opened up 5 years ago or so there was another choice added, a 25% larger basket (mostly in width) for those big family bi-weekly shopping trips. The new store was more brightly lit to enhance the shopping experience and had slightly wider aisles, coincidentally about 25% wider.

A couple years later these small carts appeared that had a shelf for those small plastic baskets, which in a strange way almost returned the cart to it’s humble roots and allowed those to lazy to actually have to carry those ten items.

On a quick trip to the store this evening I noticed a 6th different kind of cart sharing the abandoned in the parking lot experience with its brethren, sort of a hybrid between the small cart with shelf and a regular cart. It looked like a plastic basket cart with a wire basket about a third of the size of a regular cart permanently attached.

Started down, still down.
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Like Kissing Your Sister

Pop the champagne, we're a pretty good team!Last night, after their 5th loss in a row, the FRS backed into the Wild Card spot in the American League playoffs because the Texas Rangers lost as well. This means that even if the Red Sox lose their last 5 games they will still have a better record than the Rangers if they win all of their last games. Which is a good thing too because the FRS are about to lose the the Blue Jays again tonight (in a double digit shut out no less.)

This morning the Sox web site was proudly directing folks to the store where you could buy your 2009 Wild Card paraphernalia. No thanks. Admittedly the 2003 World Series winning Red Sox were the Wild Card team, but trust me, this is not the 2003 team. They’ll be lucky to get past the first round the way they are playing.

Sniff, Sniff

Finished the last of West Wing tonight. To use one of President Bartlett’s favorite expressions and the nearly last line spoken on the show, by the newly inaugurated President Santos, “What’s next?”

Gall Bladder Ectomy

At 7:30 this morning they dragged my groggy wife away on a wheeled bed and three hours later a nurse was pushing her out to the car in a wheelchair. She had three incisions in her mid-section, was short one minor …wait let me check Wikipedia … organ and crumpled in her fist was a script for Dr. House’s favorite pills.

Isn’t modern medicine so amazing? I can’t help but think of that scene from Star Trek IV when the crew of the Enterprise travel back to the then current time (1986) and they have to rescue Chekov from a hospital because Bones is worried for his safety in the hands of practitioners of barbaric 20th century treatments. Imagine how we would react to what constituted the practice of medicine in the 18th century if we somehow found ourselves there.

She is still a bit sore and the vicoden is keeping the edge off, but she helped me cook dinner, washed the dishes and we walked around the small block in our neighborhood afterward. Current plan is to return to work next Monday.

Started down, still down.
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Post #3,290

Just watched last week’s season premier of FlashForward and it wasn’t too bad, very interesting premise and just like the premier of the show it is being compared to most, LOST, one needs to suspend their grasp on reality to buy into the carnage of the opening scenes. But like TDTVS, I think if given a chance this may be an interesting show.

Before watching FlashForward we watched the contents of the red envelope on the coffee table, The Jane Austen Book Club. I’m a guy and I have never read a Jane Austen book and I think that may have helped in my enjoyment of the movie. I’m pretty sure this was classified as a “chick flick” when it first came out and I would have never even thought of dropping it in the rental if not for the recommendation of a fellow MMC member. Why did I trust her suggestion? Because she likes a good action flick as well as the next guy, that’s why. I so bought into this movie that I didn’t even recognize Emily Blunt and I saw what I thought to be an actual familial resemblance between Amy Brenneman and LOST’s Maggie Grace who played a mother and daughter.

Started down, still down.
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Birthday Boy Goes Caching

We came back from the SMH via US25 instead of the Interstate and snagged a few caches on the way.

The eight finds put us over the two hundred mark, 202 to be exact.

We crossed off three counties, Greenville, Laurens & Greenwood, bringing us to 17 of 46 completed in that challenge.

Plus we filled in 3 DeLorme pages, 17, 18 & 33 meaning we are now finished with 14 of 47 pages.

We also crossed off the letter X from the SC Alphabet Challenge leaving us needing only J & Z to complete the 26 needed for that one.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
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Rainy Saturday in NC

Hairy HedgeIt was a quiet and rainy day here at the SMH. We were up early enough to get the lot mowed and give a bad haircut to the hedge in front of the porch (before picture to left) before the rain started.

We didn’t get in any caching because we are not hard core enough, a little (and it was not always little) bit of precipitation scared us away.

So we stayed inside and watched all of Disc 5 of Season 7 of West Wing this afternoon and we now have just the very last 3 episodes to watch. We are still not sure what we are going to replace it with in our TV rental queue, quite possibly nothing.

After West Wing I spent the next three hours watching the FRS lose to the Yankees again. I know the games don’t really mean anything standing wise, we’re not catching them for the division and we have a lock on the wildcard, but if they don’t at least win tomorrow I’m going to have to take an incredible amount of grief at work on Monday from my manager…

Started down, went up, still up.
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