Took a 15 minute nap on the couch this evening and then spent the next 30 minutes after waking, coughing. I can hardly wait until I wake up in the morning.
…the tough go shopping.
The FRS were on TV tonight because they were playing the Braves and if you live in the south every Braves game is on TV. The Red Sox had their 13 Trillion Yen Man (Daisuke Matsuzaka) pitching and there was much excitement in the Land of the Rising Sun because he was facing off against the Brave’s Japanese starter Kenshin Kawakami. Both guys have had rough starts to the season, but tonight’s rough start award went to Boston’s Dice-K as his first pitch of the game was belted into the bullpen for a home run. Then it went downhill from there. By the end of the 5th inning the Sox were down 6-0, so we went out to do our weekly grocery shopping.
For the second time in seven days we have left a store leaving our selected purchases behind.
I got in a checkout line behind what I thought was a woman who was nearly finished as she had a full cart and about a dozen items left on the belt. After unloading 2/3rds of the cart onto the nearly empty belt I realized it hadn’t moved and there were now two cashiers fiddling around at the scanner. I think they were trying to take an item off the woman’s order, they’d swipe something and the machine would boop and they’d both look up at the screen in unison, shake the heads, repeat. After the forth time I think it worked because one cashier left and the remaining one scanned another item and then immediately starting asking for the first cashier to come back. It was now becoming clear that she didn’t know what she was doing. And it also became clear that the shopper was separating the final 10 items into 2 separate orders and she had a paycheck to cash or maybe a substance check and that we were going to standing here awhile. There was one other check out line open, but there was no way that I was off loading the belt to put it in my cart to move over two slots. We looked at each other, shrugged and headed for the door.
We drove a mile down the street to another store, probably spent $25 more dollars than we would have at the first store, but we were in and out and on the way home like we should have been at Store #1.
The game was mercifully over by the time we got back, both teams each scored 2 uneventful runs, so they FRS lost by a score of 8-2. They play each other twice more over the weekend, so it is not too late to save face.
After a fitful night of sleep when it came time for me to get up and go to work, I refused to do it. Donna, who actually sounds a lot worse than I did, decided that she was going in.
After she left I went back to bed, but I couldn’t get right back to sleep, so curled up on the couch and turned the TV to the digital music channel called Soundscapes (Relax, energize, and expand the soul with this rich mix of new age, atmospheric, and world-positive music.) I closed my eyes and woke up 4 hours later.
I ate lunch and took a nice hot bath. As I lay down to take an afternoon nap I heard the garage door go up. Donna’s boss had sent her home because she sounded so bad. She went to one room and lay down and I went into another, 3 hours later we woke up.
She still sounds worse than I do, but I think tomorrow we’ll both make a full day of work.
JC Penny had an ad in the paper promoting $9.99 polo shirts. There was also a $10 coupon if you spent $50. I haven’t had any new shirts for work in about 3 years, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity to update my closet for cheap, buy 5 shirts and get them for only $40.
We hit the mall in town early and at Penny’s they only had one style marked at $10 instead of the flyers four with most of the polos there marked at $12.99. That didn’t seem right, so we left the store and checked the other major stores in the mall looking for deals on shirts. We had no luck so ended up back at JCP. I picked out 3 shirts I liked, another that would do and headed for the checkout.
There were two women at the counter talking to the sales clerk as they checked out, they must have known each other. He kept reaching to one side of the counter into a large pile of clothes and scanning an item. Looked like he was going to be at it awhile, so we headed over to the other side of the store to the only other open register. There were two separate woman in line there and the girl was finishing with one as we walked up. The clerk looked at the remaining woman and said, “I’ll be right back. I’ve run out of register tape.”
That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, I put down the shirts and we left the store. We’ll probably go to Augusta tomorrow and try their JC Penny.
If I thought keeping a meeting together for the Miata Club with 18 attendees was hard, try it with about 75 geocachers, like herding cats in a thunderstorm.
I have now eaten at the Golden Corral twice in the last three days and if I never eat there again it will be too soon.
At what point does too much advertising about a new product tip over into negative feeling towards said product?
Finally, after being not literally, but figuratively rained out all last week and the first 80% of this week we got to ride the bike into work today.
Every Wednesday Firehouse Subs comes to ASCO and sells fresh made sandwiches. There is a three woman crew that makes about 70-80 sandwiches between 11:30am and 1:00pm. For the ease of it (and the shapes sort of fit), lets call them Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear. Papa Bear is the one in charge, the order taker and money handler. She recognizes the regulars, remembers their names and their usual sandwich of choice.
Donna and I sporadically take advantage of this service every couple weeks or so. Today was our monthly engineering department communications meeting/lunch where everyone buys a sub to eat while we watch a PowerPoint presentation and discuss current events, work related and otherwise. Usually Donna and I split a sub and she eats at her desk while I eat mine at the meeting, but today I was on my own as Donna didn’t want a sub.
I’m guessing to either eliminate boredom or perhaps give some cross-training, Papa Bear has started making the subs and Momma Bear has been handling the ordering part of the business. Now I’m sure Momma Bear is a nice kid and all, but I think when they were passing out brains she didn’t get in line because she thought they said trains and wasn’t interested.
I ordered a small steak sub, $4.50, added an iced tea, $1.25 and you could hear the gears turning, after a slight pause she said $5.75. I handed her a ten dollar bill and I think she stopped breathing for a second as she harnessed all her brain functions to do the math. It just wasn’t happening so she punted, “Papa..what’s.” I said, “$4.25.”
I think if I had said $7.25, she would have given it to me.