9 January
Man, work is a pain. Mostly because there isn't enough of it.
You see, New Chick is doing my job until she takes over Diane's position when we move and right now she's learning the ropes. My ropes. Which means that I am nearly ropeless and I'm filing and matching PO's and shit that I usually can't be bothered to do, but since the new system isn't actually on my computer as yet, it's what I'm stuck with.
After another day of making fifteen minutes of work last for three hours, I went home and decided to pick up the new TV Guide at Pathmark, and while I was there I thought I'd pick up a couple of cans of cat food, and maybe a potato and some of those little hard pears that are so good and...
At that point I decided to get a cart and do it properly.
So I looked around, but I couldn't find anything free. It was awfully strange--you know how in most supermarkets there are dozens of discarded carts right by the checkout stands? Well here there wasn't a single cart in sight that was not in use! Nor was there a place off to the side where they lived all in a row, so I went to customer service and asked where they were hiding the carts, and she said that they were outside, round the corner.
"Do you have a key?" she asked. "???" I replied, and she handed me this little metal disk that looked like the name tags on my cat's collars and told me that I needed it to get the cart. So I went outside and round the corner and there were the carts, each with a little lock attaching one cart to the next, and you put the cat tag in it and that releases the cart. You can also use a quarter, and then you have to put it back with the other carts and re-attach the lock to get your quarter (or your key) back.
Has anyone ever seen this before? I thought it was a clever way of making people put their carts away, but it all seemed a bit much.
So then I went up and down every aisle, exploring. It's an enormous supermarket! The only thing I've ever seen to rival it is the massive Safeway in Wimbledon near where Greg and Elaine live, which is ridiculously large. And it had three out of the four foods that I am addicted to but are almost impossible to find: Franco-American Spaghetti-Ohs and Meatballs, Bachman's Jax, and Barber Food's Chicken Cordon Bleu. The only thing that they didn't have is Campbell's Chicken 'n' Dumplings soup, which I wasn't surprised at, since I've only ever seen it at one store in the past twenty years, and I think that they got it through some warp in the space-time continuum or something.
So, except for the extreme oddness with the carts, the excursion was an unqualified success.
When I got home I turned on the TV and the Nationals were on!
That's ice skating, for the un-initiated.
It was the men's finals, and the ice was wonky so the skating was remarkably messy, though the dueling quads were pretty interesting, and Michael Weiss was flat out terrific. That quad was so close, I was sure he'd gotten it. It's gonna happen these Olympics, I'm sure.
The funniest part was where Dick Button was talking about the appalling state of skating these days, what with such emphasis being placed of triple jumps, the bits between the triples are being ignored.
Well, Dick, I think that's your fault, don't you? Dick Button invented the triple jump!
I just realized that the entire preceding section is, unless you love skating as much as I do, the most boring thing that I have ever written. Sorry, ducks.
My friend David Van has jumped on the on-line journal bandwagon! The quality of writing is really high, and I would recommend it even if I didn't know the author. Go see it!
One year ago today:
For heaven's sake, people, if you're going to steal a soda, just STEAL IT!
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Last Updated Sat 9 May 19:21:09 1998