A week or so ago when we were in Kroger, I saw a box collecting school supplies for homeless children. I wanted to contribute, and when Staples and Office Depot/Max put stuff on sale starting on Sunday for the opening of school, I decided to go both places today on my compressed day to collect some supplies.

Well, the only Staples "close" to us is way out on Dallas Highway, and when I realized school was actually starting on Monday—I know, it's crazy—I wondered if Kroger was still collecting. So since I was stopping at Barnes & Noble to use a coupon anyway, I briefly stopped at the Kroger on the opposite side of the road to determine if they were still collecting supplies. Upon seeing the collection boxes, I knew they were.

Anyway, picked up the new postmistress mystery, a discount book, and the new "Smoky Mountain Living," as well as—hurrah! the first fall magazine! Country Sampler—and then stopped at Hallmark to pick up a card for Jessie Elder, who's doing a five-month internship at Disney World. From there I went to Staples and picked up pencils, pencil erasers, a couple of pencil cases, a few sharpeners, and a stack of notebooks. There were almost a dozen families in the store picking up school supplies. I'm utterly baffled by elementary school students needing school supplies. When I was in school pens, pencils, notebooks paper, erasers, chalk, glue, paste (do they still use paste?), construction paper, etc. was all supplied by school taxes until you got to junior high school. Yeah, we were supposed to supply tissues or have a handkerchief (remember them?), but that was about it. We didn't use backpacks, just book straps.

(I just realized the one thing I didn't see at either store was book covers. Don't schools require the kids to cover their books any longer?)

By then it was way after one, so I stopped at Krystal for two plain "pups" (mini hot dogs). When I pulled my change from Hallmark out of my wallet, I realized the cashier gave me change for a ten, not the twenty I'd given her. ::sigh:: That's what I get for not checking my change.

I had to head all the way back to Brookwood for an Office Max, and picked up pens and erasers there. I also bought myself some highlighters and, with a coupon, some recordable DVDs. I have so much to dub off from the DVR; the problem is sitting and watching it all over to dub it.

Since we have a Kroger so close to our house, I just drove past home to take the school supplies straight there. Surprise! They already had their box collected yesterday! Damn, this is why I had checked the Kroger on Dallas Highway, to make certain the collections hadn't ended—but it was almost four o'clock by then and I didn't want to book all the way over there again. The young lady at customer service called the Floyd Road store and they still had their box, so I had a nice ride through the covered bridge area and finally got to drop off the supplies.

(I should have gone there initially; I don't think a lot about that Kroger since it's in Austell. It was actually closer to the Office Max I went to.)

James worked at home today because of the chance of rain, so once he finished up at five o'clock we went off to Tin Drum for dinner, stopped at Barnes & Noble so he could use his other coupon. I still had a "mystery book" coupon so I bought another Longmire novel.

Then finally it was time for Publix and the grocery shopping. We got lots of twofers, plus bought cucumbers and tomatoes for the salad we are taking to Hair Day. We finished the night out watching "The Trouble With Tribbles" on Star Trek, still funny after all these years.

Labels: books, errands, food, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:40:00 PM

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