Two things for this afternoon:

First of all, I went out shopping this afternoon and had one of those "America...what a country!" moments. I found, to my amazement, "Pocky."

Yes, Pocky. The beloved snack food of many a blogger.

You'll never guess where I found it for sale. Go on, guess. You won't get it in a thousand million years,I bet.

I'll tell you later on in the post, at the end, where I found it, just not to keep you in suspense.

I will say I bought a box - never had tried Pocky before thanks to the dearth of Japanese import shops near me. I always wondered what was up with them. They're actually quite good, much tastier than I expected. (I thought Pocky-mania was one of those mimetic (meme-tic?) things, or that it was a "ha ha I live near a Japanese grocery and you don't, look at me, I'm enjoying Pocky" sort of thing).


Secondly, and more importantly, I have to thank Aven!

Thank you, Aven!

I got home this afternoon (after the Pocky-purchase) and found a box on my front porch - it contained "Hip to Crochet," from my Amazon wishlist. There was a nice note included with the book. I'm so happy. It was a really nice surprise and there are a couple things in there I want to make sometime soon. (I might see if I could repurpose some of my many many stored balls of Wool-ease into the bohemian-style coat).

That was cool. What a nice thing to do.

Okay. Have you guessed? Have you tried to imagine where my Pocky came from?









have you?







don't peek until you've guessed!







(I'm not html savvy enough to do this as a popup so I have to do it the old-skool way and make you scroll down)










I found them at the local Wal-mart! Yes, Wally World. The place I deride as The Home of the Lowest Common Denominator. Frankly, I'm kind of surprised - we really don't have an Asian community in town to speak of. There are a few Chinese families and a couple of people from Vietnam, but it's not like the town where my parents live, where a Japanese car company had its base and many of the executive families were from Japan.

We do, however, have a sizable Anime fanboy/fangurl community, and my guess is (unless it's a uniform across-the-corporation decision to carry Pocky) that they requested them.

Heh. It makes me smile to think of someone having enough of a pair to go in to the wal-mart manager's office and go "Um...there are these Japanese cookie things, they're called Pocky, and they're really good. They're kind of like skinny breadsticks dipped in chocolate, and I'd really like it if you carried them."

wonder if that would work with me going in to the head of the crafts department and requesting they carry Opal? (of course, before they carried sockyarn they'd have to start carrying either double pointed needles or small-gauge circulars - or hell, any kind of circular or small-gauge needle for that matter).