1. My microwave (the current one) is also a Sharp, same brand as Charles'. So I guess Sharps have good lifespans, or at least they used to. (I have found far too many brands - Tensor was one - that I knew as "good brands" when I was younger, where either the company started cheaping out (Dixon Ticonderoga) or the brand name was apparently sold to another company (I think that's what happened with Tensor) which decided to ride on its coattails of being a known "good" brand, while making new versions under the company name that were junky and broke easily)
I don't know. I had planned on going in search of a microwave yesterday afternoon, but then I remembered one of the women in my AAUW group was having a retirement reception, and I thought it only polite to go and congratulate her, and then I had to go to the Mart of Wal.
2. I had several "This is water" (after the David Foster Wallace speech I linked to a month or so ago) moments while at the mart of Wal. By that, I mean moments where I had to consciously tell myself, "This person ahead of me in line? The one who is breaking their order into three separate orders and requesting they be rung up separately? They are not doing it to annoy me. They are maybe doing it because one order might be for an elderly or disabled neighbor who can't get out to shop, but who wants to pay the person back for the groceries, and she figures this is the easiest way to do it. Or maybe she's buying some of that stuff for a program at church and she has to have it rung up as 'no sales tax.'"
I managed pretty well with that, even though I was in line for three times longer than it took for me to get my stuff. (Pretty much all I needed was milk. I am planning a "big grocery" trip tomorrow, but I was out of milk, and I can't do for a day and a half or so without milk. And no, I haven't found anywhere local that sells Parmalat, and I can't quite stomach reconstituted dry milk.)
I kind of lost my groove in the parking lot. The lane where I usually park is a one-way lane, it's narrow enough so traffic can only enter from one end and exit from the other. And as I pulled out and got ready to exit at the "top" of the lane (the end close to the store), I realized there was a space vulture. A space vulture is one of those people who will troll around in the lot until they see someone in a close space who is preparing to leave, and then they will sit behind the person and wait. Often the person getting ready to leave is a harried parent with several children to place in car seats and lots of groceries to load up (and I'm sure they don't appreciate someone sitting there, figuratively breathing down their neck). So you often wind up waiting quite a bit when you're stuck behind a space vulture. (I was actually two cars back - there was someone else stuck waiting between me and the vulture).
And okay, okay, I get it: it's a million degrees out there. (Well, okay, not literally, but it sure feels like it). And it's a pain to have to walk from a more-distant spot to the store. But, I will observe: I did it. (My MO is to grab the first clearly open space a spot, hopefully one close to the store, but that's not a necessity)But, I don't know. I find it rude when someone does that, when they're a a space vulture, because it gums up the works for lots of other people.
I did finally get home but what I had budgeted as a fifteen-minute trip took forty-five.
(O, how I wish our town had another grocery store that was large enough to carry everything I needed. Green Spray is nice but their stock is limited and so I can't avoid the Mart of Wal.)
3. I'm just not getting much knitting or quilting done. Part of it is that I'm just tired when I get home from work (I've been putting in longer days than I do sometimes, trying to finish up a few things) and then there are the errands that just take longer than they should.
I've added a few rows on the Ostrich Plumes stole, I thought I'd photograph it, but in-progress lace usually looks like a dog's breakfast so I'm going to wait until I have it done and blocking.
4. The closed-down Braum's (which is on my drive to and from work) is apparently being refurbished. I wonder what's going to move in there. I'm hoping it's something actually useful to me, and not another auto parts store/car detailing shop/vape shop/fast food place like so many other businesses in town are. I'm not sure it would be likely to become that's NOT one of those things - a food joint is the most likely one, though I wouldn't be surprised to see yet another e-cigarette place open up (Seriously - we have three that I have seen while out driving, there might be more.) I guess e-cig places are the tanning salons of now - I remember a few years back how tanning places were EVERYWHERE. Every wide place in the road seemed to have one, and most towns, even small ones, had multiple ones. They've kind of gone away, or at least here they have. But now e-cigarettes are a big deal. (I don't know how I feel about them. On the one hand - yes, they don't stink up places and are probably less hazardous to the consumer than actual tobacco. But I've also read a couple white papers on them - this was in preparation for the department writing a policy on them which it turned out we didn't have to - suggesting that they're not well regulated, and some of the liquids sold for them may contain harmful chemicals. And of course, you're still getting nicotine, which has a lot of problems in and of itself (it can raise blood pressure, it can increase the likelihood of blood clots forming, it's addictive...) Also, I think the culture has changed to the point where someone puffing away in class or a meeting - even if it's on an e-cigarette - is seen as slightly rude. (Would that would happen with texting....))
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