Shopping

Last night on my way home from work, I stopped off at my favorite grocery store,the Shaw's/Star market at Brighton Mills, to pick up a few essentials. I love this store: it is convenient, well stocked, and the people at the deli are really nice and helpful (which is key).

I do wish that Shaw's/Star Market was a little more encouraging about having their customers bring their own shopping bags. They seem to be one of the few big chains left in the area that doesn't give a discount for bringing your own bag (both Stop&Shop and Whole Foods give you $.05 a bag.) I have four of recycled plastic bags from Whole Foods that I keep in my car for the sole purpose of food shopping.

And while it is nice to have a person bagging the groceries while I check out (so that I can make sure I get all my discounts), I suspect that the baggers haven't been trained about how to pack these kinds of bags. I routinely have all the heavy stuff packed into one. Last night in the parking lot, I ending up taking my bags apart as I split up the three cartons of milk (I like my milk) from one absurdly heavy bag into two. There is no way I could have carried them up the three flights to my place the way they were.

Sister K spent several months in high school working the registers at a supermarket, so I have both an understanding of and appreciation for the people who work at the grocery store. It isn't an easy job. I try to put my cart in the designated areas when I am done with it, and I have my coupons ready when I get in the check out line. But I do think it might be nice if the store considered giving their employees a little bit more training on the bagging to cut down the waste while improving the quality of their service.

Pip, Pip, Cheerio

My friend Diana informed me that this morning an English visitor to their office asked my friend Ellen (aka "my friend Ellen from work") if she had been "on holiday", which made me smile and reminded me of a similar incident...

When my family first went to "on holiday" England in the summer of 2000, we did a lot of sightseeing together. But by the third or fourth day, we were ready to explore different parts of the city. So my sister K and I split up from our parents and Sister B, who went to St. Paul’s Cathedral, while Sister K and I visited Westminster Abbey, walked along St. James’ Park to Buckingham Palace, and then walked to Picadilly Circus.


map borrowed from Lonely Planet

While walking the last leg, we stopped at a Starbucks for some coffees. As we were coming out of the shop, we were stopped by a man asking for directions to a local destination that we didn't know. When we told him that we couldn’t help, he said, “that’s all right, luv.” As he walked away, the two of us looked at each other and squeed, “He called us ‘luv’.” He totally heard us, but we didn’t care. A real English person called us “luv”. Hoorah!

With JR in JP

Last Thursday, JR and I went down to the Forest Hills Cemetery Lantern Festival after grabbing some supper at the Dogwood Cafe, where I had a fantastic French dip sandwich from the specials' menu. (Props to the Dogwood for toasting the roll; everything tastes better on toast.) Because we got to the cemetery on the later side, we missed taking pictures in the twilight, but I was able to capture a couple before my point and shoot camera's battery died.

Note to self: if you attend an event with the purpose of taking some cool photos (and trust me, JR and I were not the only ones. In fact some girl was asking JR questions about her camera because they had the same one, and she wasn't sure how to use it. Ah, youth.) double check that you have charged the battery. OOPS!

While I was a disappointed that I didn't get some better snaps, at least we didn't get eaten alive by mosquitoes. AND we had a really fun time catching up at dinner, which really was the more important part of the evening.

Let's Get Away From It All

I took last week off of work and, while I didn't take a big trip, I did do a little bit of jaunting around New England.

First, I went down to CT to visit my family, and my Sister K and I stopped by to smell the roses in Elizabeth Park in Hartford.








Then I went down to the Cape for a few days to visit with my aunt in Harwich.






Then I took a boat across Nantucket Sound to visit JeGlide for a long weekend with some of our college friends.






After having such a delightful week coming back to work is a bit like coming down from the tea party on the ceiling in Mary Poppins. I wish that vacations could go on forever.

But where has all the SUN gone?

Here is my proposal for a play list referencing the local weather:

"Here Comes the Rain Again" by the Eurythmics
"Summer Rain" by U2
"Raindrops Keep Fallin' on my Head" by BJ Thomas
"Rainy Monday" by Shiny Toy Guns
"Why Does It Always Rain on Me?" by Travis
"Rain" by Madonna
"I Can't Stand the Rain" by the Commitments
"Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" by the Smiths

Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.