Down To The Wire

(this is more like practice for writings to be done later today)

On this day 20 years ago, communism in Europe received its final crushing blow with the fall of the Berlin Wall. As such, I hope to celebrate this momentous occasion by telling you about....my recent trip to the grocery store. (SPOILER: It has nothing to do with Berlin, Germany, walls, falling, or communism. Well, maybe a bit of communism.)

So as I do on Mondays, or at the beginning of the week, I clear out my fridge of all the spoiled and/or empty containers of food and make the journey to the Frederic Meyer (his full name in my head) and restock. Normally when people go to the grocery store the last thing they get is the milk, but for whatever reason today I decided that was the first thing I would get.

Some of you may think, "What's so bad about getting milk first?". Well, it is refrigerated for a reason. Even though many people have repeatedly told me that there isn't a chance in hell (well maybe hell, it's sorta hot there I hear) that a bottle of milk could spoil before you got it home, I felt like the race was on. I was racing down isles and if I couldn't decide before I passed an item if I needed it or not, then on the shelf it would stay. Needless to say I skipped quite a few items and also picked some strange ones up, because I was afraid if I didn't then something horrible would happen with my diet that week.

Another thing I noticed about speed shopping is the vast majority of items that I purchased were ones that happened to be at eye level. I wonder if certain food companies purchase that shelf space? It had never occurred to me, but as I was rolling (I came up with a rule about halfway through the store to save time that I had to glide through isles without touching the ground, which to me was both smart AND fun) I thought that stores could bank on this if they aren't already. Like tell Coke that their products are going on the bottom shelf....unless, they tell us why Coke Zero tastes just like Coke, or something. Maybe money would be better.

Well I got through my grocery store visit withOUT spoiling the milk, and all I had to sacrifice was purchasing the things I needed for stuff that I may or may not eat.

Oh, the communism part. Someone new must have been working the food court counter because the breakfast pizza that they normally have samples of in the morning, had whole slices as samples. I'm not kidding, WHOLE SLICES!! My only conclusion of this is that they were a communist and thought they needed to share the wealth and bring down the Frederick Meyer capitalistic machine. Or they were too lazy to cut it into small pieces. Either way, good for me.

(And for no reason at all, go here http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/)