Random Thursday

We were discussing the Gazette over coffee and dessert last night and I mentioned that I was having a “creative block” (whatever that means) and a friend asked if that was the real reason for the lack of posts, rather than the workload as I had indicated. I told her that those things went hand-in-hand. When I’m overloaded on the work side of things, that tends to suck dry what little creativity I have to begin with, leaving nothing for blogging…except for posts like this which serve no purpose other than to assure (or warn, as the case may be) folks that I’m still capable of random acts of keyboarding.

  • I, for one, am happy to hear that our local H-E-B is expanding. <hgtv>Maybe that will mean that it’ll finally have the shelf space to carry the Bounty Select-A-Size Paper Towels with the blue floral print that matches our tile backsplash. I’m sick up to here with having to settle for institutional white.</hgtv>
  • We finally watched The Wedding Crashers, courtesy of NetFlix, and the thing that really struck me was…was that Dwight Yoakam playing the husband in the opening divorce settlement scene? Why, yes…yes, it was. It reinforces Dwight’s lock on the category of The Actor Who Most Desperately Needs To Continue Wearing A Cowboy Hat Pulled Down Over His Eyes. Plus, I didn’t realize that he was born in Kentucky; he pulls off the Bakersfield, CA act so convincingly, you know?
  • It rained today, and is still drizzling a bit at this moment. About a half inch so far, at least in our backyard, and I’m reminded of why rain makes things look so fresh and green in Midland: we get used to dust covering all the plants and grass. (Let’s just keep that our little secret; no need to bring the Chamber of Commerce into this, hmm?)
  • MLB was called out for Emergency Clothing Rental duty Tuesday night, as The Nephew apparently realized that time was growing short for him to acquire a tux for this weekend’s prom. She found him and a friend standing outside the rental store in the mall, sporting deer-in-the-headlight looks. Have you already found what you want, she asked. No…we had to come out here because they started asking us all these questions we couldn’t answer, he replied. Like what? she asked. Like, what do I want? was his reply.

OK, it wasn’t much, but it was something. And sometimes, that’s the best we can hope for. Peace out.

30 comments

  1. I just wish that our HEB was being transformed into Central Market!
    Oh, and if the younster who helped us with tuxes is the same one your nephew encountered, I can’t wait to visit with YLB to compare notes! I almost had to shake ours awake when she laid her head down on the counter sideways as she sucked insipidly on her pen cap. When my son looked at the catalog with its vast number of pages of jackets and gasped, I asked Sleepy if she could tell us which jackets had been popular, what were other students choosing. “Everything,” was her helpful, dull-eyed reply.

  2. My Thursday has been kind of random too… and it also involved a trip to the grocery emporium (not called HEB around here though). I haven’t channeled Lileks yet though.
    Here’s to more Random Thursdays!

  3. I wish HEB had decided to build a second store instead of just super sizing the current one. There are enough crazed shoppers for one already. Alberstons has fewer good brands and costs more but is worth it for me. There I don’t have to be worried about serious injury due to cart mishaps.
    Am I the only one in town who sprays all my foliage off so that it looks better. My rational reasoning is that it helps the plant leaves breath.

  4. And the car wipes. Anyone know what happened to those little pre-moistened towelettes that came in the little pouch that you could just pull out and give your car a little buff up where the car washed missed? I went the other night looking for some and … nada. And I’m none too happy about it.

  5. Phyllis, she said that the salesperson was pretty, um, disengaged (actually, that’s my word, not hers; she was more blunt). Likely a clone, if not the same one…
    Jim, I haven’t actually been to the grocery store today, but that paper towel thing has been eating a hole in my gut for a long time and I finally had to get it out into the open.
    Wallace, if you go to HEB at 8:30 a.m., you pretty much have the store to yourself. Of course, the shelves aren’t stocked, but you can’t have everything…and especially not the paper towels that you need and deserve. And I would never spray Midland water on my plants’ leaves. Except for the grass, of course. Not that that’s advised either, but the Evian was getting expensive.
    Jimmy, get a life. 😉

  7. And did you like The Wedding Crashers?
    Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn are able to make extremely likeable people out of the most odious characters…and they display those skills to their fullest here. From one perspective, the movie was one giant insult to the female gender (although given the amount of male-bashing in the world, perhaps it’s needed to balance the scales a bit). From another perspective, it was two hours of relatively harmless fluff, with a few laugh-out-loud scenes. Overall? Meh. Two ants.
    [And the scene where Christopher Walken is conducting a quail hunt by blowing on a duck call? Was that a joke, or did they think the audience would actually fall for that?]

  8. But I prefer my papertowels industrial white, just white, no designs please.
    OK, fine. Reasonable minds may differ. But think how you’d feel if all you had to choose from was a variety of floral and barnyard prints.
    And don’t get me started about $9/pint blueberries. Can we blame that on Big Oil too?

  9. Gwynne got in first with the question I was going to ask hehe. Some of us dont know the difference between calls, so fell for it haha. Whatever the case, Im glad you can still do random acts of keyboarding!

  11. Wait, did you say $9/pint blueberries? Surely you jest. What in the world?
    Actually, it probably does have something to do with the cost of fuel. At least that’s the excuse we’re getting over here for the recently ratcheted produce prices.

  12. I may have misspoke. If I recall correctly, the last time I looked blueberries were $4.99 for a half pint…so that works out to almost $10/pint.
    If fuel’s to blame, how come strawberries are still $1.49/pound?

  13. That’s the same question I asked! So the guy went over and changed the prices on the strawberries and the other customers in the produce section asked me if I could please leave.
    Actually, no… it didn’t happen that way. And I have no idea why the disparity but I have noted that same phenomenon.

  14. Strawberries are only $1.49 a pound?? Yeesh. We can get the low-low two 1/2 pints for $6. Um, yeah. Do you really think that we can’t figure out that’s $6 a pint? (Well, actually, apparently some people can’t cause they’re oohing and ahhing at the great deal – cause they get TWO.) Of course, I just bought some tomatoes (cause they looked so delicious) for $5.18 a pound, so I think I’m probably out of my mind as well.
    As for the prom tux thing – I think having a less-than-interested sales person is part of the rite of passage that is prom.

  15. A half-pint of strawberries? What is that, like, three berries? Are you sure they’re not just sunburned blueberries? 😉
    I can’t imagine how much job satisfaction must accompanying being a tux rental clerk…dealing with all those high school-aged boys and clueless grooms-to-be.

  16. The new(ish) HEB in Kerrville followed the lead of their Central Markets in designing the main entrance to make you run the produce section maze, as opposed to the standard store layout where you pick an aisle to start with and go from there. My guess is when they do the expansion, the Midland HEB will also make you run the fruit-and-veggie gauntlet to access the rest of the store (The Kerrville outlet doesn’t go as far as Central Market in forcing you to also pass through the meat, seafood, deli and bakery departments before you can get back to the drinks and condaments/spices section.)

  17. John, the Midland store’s already laid out like that. Unless you want to enter on the end with the pharmacy, you have to go through the produce section.
    However, the planned expansion will be on the end of the building where the produce section is currently located, so it will be interesting to see if they keep the current main entrance, letting you decide whether to go left or right (but still going through produce) or if they’ll completely re-configure everything.
    [Gee, isn’t life in Midland exciting? ;-)]

  18. Me, I like to go through the produce section first, then around the perimeter of the store, avoiding the middle section like the plague…that’s where all the evil, nasty, high in fat and calories stuff resides. Of course, there are days when that’s all I want and have to fight the produce maze to get there.
    I concur with your Two Ants rating for the Wedding Crashers…I laughed a few times but overall got bored with the theme. I completely missed the mix-up on the duck/quail call though. I’d guess that was not an intentional joke, but funny that you caught it.

  19. Yeah, it’s a rare visit that I don’t have several things to pick up in the vegetable and fruit section. Of course, it’s unheard of for me not to pick up stuff in the “evil, nasty” section, too. Man does not live by kohlrabi alone.

  22. Jimmy, my defense mechanism for when someone asks a question I can’t answer and for which I can’t even fake an answer is to pretend that I didn’t hear the question.
    Did you ask a question? 😉

  25. Sure, Jimmy. You just start out going east on W Wall St toward S Colorado St, take US-80 East, then merge onto I-20 East for about 139 miles, then merge onto 277 North for another 142.3 miles, and then…well, about 800.92 miles later, you’ll see it on your left. You can’t miss it.

  30. Gasp!
    Actually, if I was a real woman, I would have been even more specific in my directions, to the point where you might have used the pen (if you had one) to poke my eyes out (e.g. “when you get to the Ann Taylor shop, turn around and go back to that place with the blue awnings and make a left by the stone fence, then…”).
    Want I should send you some of those car wipes?

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