September 20, 2010
-
1 So I open a jar of Claussen pickles yesterday, crunch down on one of the juiciest, and it’s SWEET.2 Now I’m sure I’ll catch some flack on this one, but to me? Pickles should NOT be sweet, but instead should taste “pickled”. It’s okay for relish to be sweet, but a pickle? Come on.
3 Great moments in disappointment.
4 Don’t get me wrong. Claussen makes a pretty good pickle. Crunchy and amazing. Good for a diet too, so I’ve been told.
5 It all began yesterday afternoon when I finished making a vocab list for today’s lesson. It was the end of two straight days of planning and grading.
6 It took a shorter time than I thought, so I thought I’d kite off to Kinkos to make some copies.
7 I know, I know. What’s this have to do with pickles?
8 Hey, just trust the process here.
9 I’ll get to that, dude.
10 I think.
11 The Kinkos I go to is on Hostetter, a reasonably normal street in good ol’ Sannozay. It eventually turns into Brokaw Road.
12 I needed TP, as we were down to our last roll.
13 TMI, I imagine. But normal Sunday stuff.
14 As the machine started throwing copies, I thought to myself, “There’s a Tony Franco’s PW Super, which is going out of business, directly next door!”
15 That PW used to be awesome, but in the past year it has been slowly running out of stuff. I knew it was on the outs, because we lost a PW Super over by my house a few years ago. The same stuff happened. I assumed that there would be remarkable bargains, and I was right.
16 But it was…weird.
17 Really weird.
18 Anyway, when I approached the front of the store, it had all sorts of printer paper with signs that let me know that most of what was left in the store was now 50% off: cosmetics, health-care products, things like that.
19 I thought, “What the hey! That means that TP must also be on sale, but I certainly hope that the two-ply is still available!” At first I was pretty happy about the sales, but once I walked in…
20 Wow.
21 Ever walk into a store that was going out of business? It’s a sad thing, really. First, you know that people are going to lose jobs, so a part of you doesn’t really feel comfortable walking around the store. Then there was the physical realities: Stock was down, shelves were empty, and the only Altoids they had left were the ones that turn your tongue green. Walk into a store going out of business, and there is a feeling of sadness coupled with a sort of vulture mentality.
22 All I wanted to do was to get in and out of there in as short a period of time as I could muster.
23 But after a fashion, I decided to settle slowly into it. There WERE bargains everywhere, on every imaginable item, and being the thrifty sort that I am, I thought I’d have a little patience at the plate.
24 Baseball term, but what it means is simply to slow your life down and survey slowly anything that looks good.
25 So it worked, albeit in a VERY strange manner.
26 I got a frozen Stouffer’s Veggie Lasagna for six bucks, for example.
27 I also got some Romano cheese, frozen veggies,cheap rum, and about two thousand Lean Cuisines at two bucks a pop.
28 Still…a store on the verge of closing has a rather tragic sense to it. It was difficult trying to celebrate because of the atmosphere of doom.
29 Large sections were roped off. All that was left in the meat section was frozen seafood from God knows where. It all looked a little yellowish.
30 The bath tissue aisle was almost cleared, except for these little dollar-store packages that looked like they could use a meal.
31 Amid all of this sadness was an aisle that had cans of various items. I really wanted to get out of there at this point, when I saw the pickles.
32 Amid all this sadness was a jar of Claussen pickles. I grabbed them up, didn’t really care what they cost, and went up to the checker. I knew that I had struck gold!
33 Since there were only about four people shopping, it was pretty easy to go through the line. There was one lady talking to the guy who was checking. They talked about how truly sad this is, and he said that PW was going to try to help them all get jobs. But he knew the economy.
34 Fortunately, the guy was in pretty good spirits. Young guy, so I guess it wasn’t the end of the world, but still. I’ve had to look at this stuff going on everywhere.
35 Moving on, Sort of, Part the First: The other day I received notification that my ybdrama.com website had been shut down for non-payment. I was a bit confused, because I didn’t remember getting a reminder or anything. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I paid. I was always pretty pissed at Geocities because I upgraded a few years back, and when I went to build the website, it wouldn’t let me do a lot of things. How’s that an upgrade? I complained, and they never did help.
36 I haven’t used the site since 2006 anyway. But still, I always let it sit out there in the weeds like a sort of museum piece. It never made me sad. I always thought it was a sort of fun website.
37 I do intend to contact those guys and see about getting it working again, mainly because it has the only copy of The Heidi Chronicles. I have no intention of writing all of that again, since I’m not really directing anymore. But those stories are interesting, and they are a huge part of my life. I always feel that a large part of my life is sort of like that John Cusack movie Serendipity, where coincidences run the guys life.
38 But I had that strange PW sort of weirdness when I tried to access the website and couldn’t. It had nothing to do with the economy, but it did have a lot to do with the disappearance of things over time.
39 I have too many wonderful memories of the Shows over the years to get too weirded out by that. And I will try to get it working again, only because as stated, it remains a sort of museum piece sitting in the weeds.
40 Moving on, Part the Second: Well, I spent my entire weekend grading papers and planning classes. It was a welcome break heading out to Kinkos, and when I got home I was pretty happy with all the bargains.
41 The other items worked well: I put the lasagna in oven, poured some sorta pirate drink with the rum, took a pinch or two of the Romano cheese, and then eyeballed the Claussens. I couldn’t wait to crunch down on the pickle with a pinch of Romano. It’s a great little snack, and reasonably calorie free.
42 Yep. As stated. Great moments in disappointment.
43 Oh, well. We have all purchased things that may have disappointed.
44 I didn’t really want to drive all the way back and return them, so I guess I’ll just get by. They aren’t THAT bad. They might work with a hot dog tonight when I watch the Niners get their butts kicked by New Orleans. Throw in some onions. Okay, I’m there.
45 My cure for insomnia, by the way, fell to the wayside last night. My legs cramped up from all the mugginess, so I awakened at around 2:30 complaining of pickles.
46 That explains this entire mess.
47 So it’s around 3:45 a.m. as I finish this up, on a Monday morning.
48 Think I’ll catch some winks before moving on.
49 Have a grand day everyone. That’s about all I have left.
50 Yours in sweet pickles.
51 Peace.
~H~
