Saturday's Sojourns

On Saturday, I made a couple of shopping trips. In the morning, I drove to Idiotville so I could purchase a poster frame at Michael's, using one of their coupons. I dislike going to crafts stores because I am assaulted by the aroma/odor of incense or scented candles or something as soon as I enter. Then, when I finally got accustomed to the stench such that I barely noticed it, they hit me with a couple of Christmas songs over the loudspeaker. I guess that means St. Valentine's day is just around the corner.

In the afternoon, I drove to Ft. O to check out a couple of new (to me) stores.

First, I went to a liquor store named Beverage World. I was impressed by the beer selection listed on its website. The store itself isn't as nice as the site, but they did not lie about the variety of beers on hand.

Next, I stopped at K-Mart to purchase a starter toolkit for a coworker who just moved into a Habitat-built home. I had given her a gift card for Target at her housewarming (last weekend? a couple weekends ago?), which turned out to be a very good idea, since everyone else bought her dishes, small kitchen appliances, and bathroom supplies, so I didn't duplicate anything. (Miraculously, neither did anyone else.) However, it niggled in my mind that she didn't have anything for simple repairs around the house, so I got her some.

Third, I ate lunch at Zaxby's.

After that, I bought groceries at Aldi. I had never heard of it before, but the ad occasionally in the newspaper makes it sound interesting, so I thought I'd check it out. The website mentions a few non-mainstream foods, but it's not a gourmet market. It's also not very big, so if you don't see it on the shelves, they don't have it. (It looks like the European Market in Idiotville is the only place in The Noog where I can buy red currant jelly.) What they do have is a surplus of customers who drive their shopping carts down the wrong side of the aisle. They also have an odd checkout system, where the cashier puts everything back into your cart after scanning, and then you push your cart over to a diaper-changing table (or so it appeared to me) to bag the items yourself. The dairy and produce prices were less than my usual grocery stores in The Noog, but do I want to drive that far every week to buy a bag of too many bananas for me to eat before they spoil? (Okay, I guess I could eat two a day.)

Incidentally, I was subjected to more Christmas songs at the grocery store. Thank heavens for the classical radio station on in my car, which drove them out of my head!

I now had milk and ice cream in my car, but I wanted to make one more stop before heading home: Dunkin Donuts -- you know: the coffee place that also happens to sell donuts? (My receipt contained a coupon for a free donut upon my next purchase of coffee. Why not give me a free donut upon my next purchase of donuts?) Even the door handle was a big, pink, plastic "D", to remind customers of the shop's humble origins. It was kind of humorous to me that, from the angle I approached, it blocked part of the "Pull" sign on the door, so it looked like it said "Dull".

Incidentally, it took 15 minutes to drive from what I call The Intersection in Ft. O to my apartment. My ice cream sandwiches didn't melt (I had to test them, didn't I?), and my milk didn't spoil.