Panic, Aisle 16

And I am not prone to panic, much less in the grocery store.

I had already fought through the problem of forgetting most of our shopping bags at home. In Austin, stores are not allowed to give customers plastic bags to tote home their purchases - you bring your own. Before I left the house I threw our bags into the back of my car, then went back in to get a jacket and iPod and headphones, of course. My wife asked me then to take her car and fill it with gas on the way. Sure, piece of cake. So we traded keys and I was off - bags still in my car and me in hers. Oh well.

I have an emergency plan when this happens, and it does often. Go into the produce area and nick an empty box or two. Luckily somebody had just stocked a lot of bananas so there were some sturdy big empty boxes, and I got one. This in addition to a stray I found in her car were all I could find.

This was a large shopping trip - the buggy was full. The store was full, of people. Lines were long at checkout. But luckily I saw a very short line and got in it - somebody in a Rascal, a motorized cart for disabled shoppers but are used by able-shoppers a lot. He had quite a few items too. Shortly the girl began checking my purchases. I went and starting putting items in my box. About halfway through I went back to slide my credit card to pay - the girl still swiping items over the scanner - and I looked up at her aisle light over the register - and it said "10 items or fewer". I gasped! Oh no, and said "10 items or fewer! Oh no!" She looked at me, realized my panic, and said - Wait! I just turned that light on. You are my last customer before this is an Express Lane.

Relief washed over me. But the guy who walked up to get in line a moment later gave me a long stern disapproving look.

PS nothing says don't talk to me in the store like someone wearing headphones.

48 Across

Trying to solve yesterday's Wall Street Journal crossword, is this clue for 48 Across: Crude oil, informally.  I've known this answer since my age was in single digits, over 40 years.

It involves a man named Jed (a poor mountaineer) who barely kept his family fed. Then one day he was shootin' at some food, when up from the ground comes a bubblin' crude (oil that is, black gold, Texas Tea).

And there it is - TEXAS TEA -the answer.

I am beginning to think crosswords are a form of meditation, unearthing pleasant memories, allowing a few moments of enjoyment, and then on to the next.

Here's my hero Uncle Jed:



 PS  unpleasant memories,  I've tried to quarantine, expurgate, and cement them away. The one of my youngest brother having a small playground slide cutting open his nose when he was 3 or 4 years old almost made its way out over the holidays but I reined it back into its pen.

oh and by the way, I love the TV show the Beverly Hillbillies, absolute gold.

Reborn Germ-a-phobia

This morning immediately upon waking from sleep, alarm induced waking, I proceeded to knock glasses off the night stand. Glasses hit the floor and bounced under bed about 2 or 3 feet. Wonderful. I tire of always being tied to a pair of reading glasses. Can't read a thing if its inside 3 feet, over that, pretty good.

Yesterday on a small grocery run, as I stood in line to check out, there was next in line behind me a father and his daughter, the little girl 3 to 4 years of age. The dad was busy looking at his phone. The little girl was down in the cart, not in the seat, and was running her mouth all over the top of the wire cart. I watched not knowing what to say or do - it was horrifying as she gummed that cart, the cold metal probably feeling good to her - but oh the humanity. The dad finally looked up - said in a somewhat cool voice, hey honey don't do that, its dirty. And then turned back to his phone. I pretended to be picking out a candy bar.

In grocery stores I am a reborn germ-a-phobe. I like kids, well I like my kids (who are now 19, 22, and 25 years old), but they always seems to be coughing, with running noses, reaching out of the buggy to grab stuff, especially produce which seems to be right at their eye level and at a short arm's length.  I choose food and boxes that are far up high and back. Bon appetit.

2014 wheels are off the ground

The New Year is off and running and I'd say its a good start. New Year's Eve and Day were spent watching a fair amount of Twilight Zone episodes on SciFi Network marathon. Also took in a few football games. But mainly spent the day unpacking and cleaning up after holiday trip to see my folks in Louisiana.

Today is trash and recycling materials pick up day - and I put out our bins last night. This morning I had one last bag to put in trash before pick up. I noticed upon lifting the lid on the bin that a neighbor had filled our container with overflow from their house. As I reached in to grab a big bag to reposition it to make more room, a sharp thick wire poked through the bag and stuck me in the finger. Not sure I was punctured because I tried to squeeze some blood out but got nothing, and later noticed a good scratch on another finger. Went in to wash hands, and hopefully wash away all infections. So be careful out there.

Before leaving for Lake Charles, LA, my family here watched The Muppet Christmas Carol, on VHS no less, a version which is not intended to be a faithful rendition of the Dickens classic, but I rate it high on entertainment, and Michael Caine is terrific as Scrooge. (check Hypnogoria podcast for a rating of the Christmas Carol movies) As a result I decided to re-re-re-read the original story to refresh my memory on the variances between most "Carol" movies and the source material. So I downloaded the novella from Project Gutenberg, migrated it to the Nook, and casually read. I came across this paragraph in the second stave which I didn't remember:  (emphasis added at the end by me, and copied from the ebook I downloaded from Gutenberg)

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief, because “three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order,” and so forth, would have become a mere United States’ security if there were no days to count by.

Obviously the bold text intended to imply that Scrooge's assets would become worthless. I had no idea there was a US reference in Christmas Carol much less using its financial instruments as a metaphor for loss in investment. Scrooge has always been portrayed in the movies as a ruthless landlord ready to throw out his renters as soon as rent went in arrears. Apparently he turned cash futures that depended on timely execution of deals.

Hopefully the future contains no possibilities for this US security metaphor to be repeated, but I fear the likelihood of the opposite is increasing.