A Dark and Stormy Morning

Began the day with a grocery store trip. It was just sprinkling when I headed for Audubon. I mainly needed to restock all the canned goods I've used in the past few weeks - pumpkin, navy beans, tomato sauce, chicken. They were having good sales on Cheerios and Acme's generic honey. I've never tried that Agave nectar that I've seen popping up in baking and cereal/syrup aisles as a replacement for corn syrup or sugar, and with good reason - it's normally very expensive. A coupon for Domino's version coupled with a decent sale brought it down to a far more manageable $1.99. I also used a sale and a coupon to get Smart Balance's 50/50 stick spread for $2.00.

I didn't get lucky with the weather riding home. It was still sprinkling when I started, but as I headed down the Black Horse Pike, the drops began to grow fatter. By the time I was on Kendall Boulevard in Oaklyn, I was soaked. I was dripping when I finally made it in the door.

I spent the rest of the afternoon doing things online and running Halloween and spooky episodes of favorite TV shows. The Muppet Show did a horror theme twice. Vincent Price, the classy Master of Horror, delighted the Muppet monsters by appearing in one of the better episodes of the first season. Shock rock star Alice Cooper turned up during the third season in a spooky spoof of Faust-style stories as he tries to get the Muppets to sell their souls...with varying results.

Alton Brown also runs afoul of scary people and wacky spoof as he tries to teach the maker of the "worst meat pies in London" how to bake the perfect mincemeat and Shepard's pies in the Good Eats episode "Oh My, Meat Pie." Edward, Ricky, and Ricky's friends tell a round-robin horror story that turns into a spoof of horror cliches and Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde in the third season Silver Spoons story "A Dark and Stormy Night."

The rain was still pretty bad by quarter of 2. I had no choice. I had to call for a ride to work. I really hated to do it, but I'd already gotten drenched going to the Acme once. I really didn't want to get drenched again. Dad drove me to and from work tonight.

And that was the worst thing that happened the entire night. It was fairly busy when I came in at 2:30. I did returns on and off through my second break around 7:30. After that, I spent the last couple of hours of my shift just doing returns. We were that quiet later in the night. They barely needed the two kids they had on the registers. I was able to get out and call Dad with no problems. The weather was down to sprinkling again by then; there were no problems getting home.

Oh, and my schedule this week is much better. More hours, and earlier ones, including a surprising six hours on Sunday (I usually only get four - we get paid extra for Sundays). My only complaint is my next day off after tomorrow isn't until Friday, but then I have Friday and Saturday off in a row.