Return to the land of grocery science

Recently I posted about grocery store technology, particularly in the area of self checkout lanes. I have recenlty come up with a new reason to utilize the self help lanes...grocery store employees. It is hard to believe that unemployment is so high in this country when you take a look around at the people helping you in the grocery store. In fact, you can make the same commentary about any type of store anymore. Unless someone is making a commission on your purchase (you know if they are by the way THEY hold the merchandise when they escort you to the checkout lanes), there is no knowledgable service anymore. There was a time when you could go to the grocery store and ask where they have chocolate covered spaghetti noodles or some obsure product and the employee would say "aisle 11, half way down, on your right, third shelf from the bottom, between the raisins and the cocoapuffs." Now when you ask where they have ketchup, they look at you like they have never heard of it and say , ''uuuuummmmm, did you look in, umm the produce aisle???" Don't even think about buying a tv or stereo at walmart or any other big box store unless you have done the research yourself and already know more than the manufacturer. The people working can't give you an answer over the quality of two different tv's that is any more useful than, " ummmm, this tv is 26" and the other is uhmmm, 25" so this one is is one more inch of quality than the other."

Of course then there is the fun again at the checkout lane. The paper or plastic question seems to be the only thing gone over in training for the grocery bagger. Don't bother trying to be "green" and buy the reusable cloth grocery bags that many stores now sell. The bagger will put them right into the plastic bag, as if you purposely bought them for home use later. I recently bought a box of popsicles on a +90 degree day, and bought one of the insulated foil bags to keep them from melting. The bagger placed the popsicles into one plastic bag and the foil bag into another. So much for smart shopping...

Date night

Whoo hoo!! It's date night tonight. Got a sitter lined up, and don't even have to take out a loan to pay for the sitter. It's dad and mom night tonight--or rather, her and I night-let's leave those other titles at the the door when we escape. On the list for tonight is a trip to the Virginia Theater to see the ALW musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." I've seen it before, but my wife hasn't. Of course, with live theatre, even if you've seen it, you haven't seen it the way they are doing it in this production. Of course, there are directors who just copy someone else's ideas or worse, copy action for action, inflection for inflection the way it was done in the movie version (I don't like it when directors do this...why would I want to pay 10-20 dollars to see a play that is an exact copy of a movie I either own or can rent for a buck???). OK, off the soapbox and back to the topic at hand. Whoo hooo, date night!!! Gotta get through the work day and get the kids picked up and get home, and then it's "our time." This only happens once in like a million years, so obviously I'm excited about it!