Accomplished some "needed doing" things today: fetched prescription drugs from Kaiser (where the poor things were just recovering from being a week without air conditioning), taking books, DVDs, old computer games, and our old printer, plus some sundry household items to Goodwill, stopped to buy and mail a birthday card, and bought more paper towels on sale at Eckerd's.

For fun we went to Hallmark and bought an ornament du jour. James went after this year's airplane and I got the Rudolph ornament, which is novel because you rarely see the adult Rudolph; it's always the little guy with antler buds. I also grabbed batteries for my Hallmark radio, which I adore: it's in the old tombstone shape and when you turn the dial there is static and then you get one of fifteen sounds: there are five station IDs (from a jazz, classical, rock'n'roll, all-Christmas, and country station—"WCOW, putting the 'cow' into 'cowboy'"), five pieces of Christmas music, and an advertisement (my favorite is the firewood place which offers a free piece of coal to the first 50 naughty customers).

We also tried the new Grand Mercado Farmer's Market, which is where the SaveRite used to be (where the Winn-Dixie used to be) near our old apartment. It's pretty cool although it's not really a farmer's market, just an ethnic grocery store: not quite half the store is Asian, not quite half the other is Mexican, and there are a couple aisles of American food and then things like detergent and cleaning things. Their produce department was swell: they had Rainer cherries for 99¢! Also strawberries for the same price, so now we have them for dessert. We also found black soy sauce, which we've been looking for for years; the last store we found it in went out of business after six months. They also have a small bakery, a little corner where they sell LCD televisions (????), and then an area with a sushi bar, Japanese fast food, and sub sandwich counter. Great stuff. We need to go back.

The last stop of the day was also the nadir: stopped by The Usual Supermarket Near Our House since they carry the Blue Bunny sugarless ice cream bars. So there I was in the express lane, 12 items or less. At the head of the line was a guy buying cigarettes, then a guy with a watermelon, then me with the two boxes of ice cream and a newspaper, an elderly man with a box of eggs and something else, a woman with some bottled water.

Between the fellow with the watermelon and myself, bold as proverbial brass, was this woman with about 30 items in her cart. Of course they are afraid of losing business, so the cashier and the other employees said nothing to this rude ingrate as she unloaded meat, ice cream, and other food on the tiny counter which is, of course, for small purchases. We folks behind her kept rolling our eyes at each other as she not only overloaded the counter, but asked "Can you scan this for me?" "Isn't this on sale?" ad nauseum. Only after the last thing was bagged did she paw through her handbag and get out her check card and run it through the ATM, squinting at the machine like she'd never operated one before.

After she left, the little cashier just rolled her eyes at me and gave me an apologetic smile.

Sheesh, and to think I felt guilty the last time I added a sixteenth tiny item (a pack of gum) in my cart at the fifteen-items-or-fewer line at Walmart. Why are people so inconsiderate? Do they just think they are too good to stand in the regular line?

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 7:23:00 PM

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