Shopping! Shopping!

          Today, 42 years ago, my first-born made his debut into this world. Happy birthday Christopher.

         

          Mike and I went shopping again this week. We don't normally go shopping two weeks in a row, but Aldi's in Athens has stopped carrying his most favorite cereal. Unfrosted, bite-size mini wheats.

          "They might still carry them in Dickson City," I told Mike. "If they sell better down there they'll keep them on the shelf."

          So we went shopping again.

          We left mid-morning and the light was being lazy. 

          Going past the farm with the lone tree standing in the pasture, I see a big bird perched there. "Mike, I think there's an eagle in that tree. Back up for me, would you please?"

          The nice thing about backcountry dirt roads is low traffic. There wasn't anyone behind us so Mike stopped and backed up. Even with my full zoom, this is the best picture I got. It's not great but that won't dampen my enthusiasm for seeing an eagle.

          "They're putting in power lines for the new LNG plant," Mike said as we were stopped waiting for the flagman to flag us through.

          "Peg, you take weird pictures," you say.

          I know right. It's just that the light was so interesting this morning. 

          We came across the scene of an accident. Although there was an ambulance there, it didn't look too bad.

          The car on the left has a bunched up hood, the car on the right, a smashed tailgate.

          The Aldi's in Dickson City didn't have Mike's cereal on their shelf either. An employee didn't know if it would be discontinued or not. There was still a place on the shelf for it. Mike's main issue is he doesn't want any sugar. There are very few brands of cereal that are zero sugar. The Aldi's brand of Cheerios has zero sugar in it too so Mike bought a couple of boxes of that.

          On the way home, I snapped a picture of this broken-down old silo. He's already lost his barn and someday he will be gone too and you won't get to see him anymore.

           There's a spot along our drive where the creek is close to the road. That's not unusual since most of our roads were old Indian trails and they tend to follow the creeks. In one spot I could glimpse an old building sitting along the creek.

          "Someday I'm going to ask you to pull over so I can take a picture of it," I've threatened for at least the past two, maybe three years. I can only see it when we're on our way home and I'm usually too tired from shopping to want to make one more stop. Well, this time Mike offered to pull over and since it was a short day of shopping, I wasn't too tired. 

          Three views of the same building is probably more than you need to see but at least I didn't show you all 50 of the pictures I took, I wrote in my head before I committed one word to paper. 50 is a guess. I don't know how many I took — but it's not that hard to find out. I went over to my photos file and found the pictures. 2286 is the first photo I took of it and 2306 is the last. If I do the math 2306 minus 2286 I get 20 but if I count the actual photos there are 21 pictures. What's up with that? I feel like I should know the answer but I don't.

        I've come across this same thing when I try to figure out how many years I've been writing to you. I first started in 1998. This is 2019, minus 1998 equals 21. I have a notebook for each year and if I count my notebooks, I have 22. Have I been writing for 21 or 22 years? I'm so confused!

          We made one more stop. The Walmart in Tunkhannock.

          "Oh, I bet that left a mark," I joked when Mike pulled up to his usual parking spot.

          "What's that?"

          "Someone hit the pole."

          I came home with a brand new printer. It's an eco tank by Epson. The store manager at Staples was kind of a jerk.

          You know the problems I've been having with my old printer. A couple of lines would be right, then a couple of lines would be wonky and hard to read.

          "She refills her cartridges," Mike told the manager.

          "Well, that's your problem right there," he said. "Refilling the cartridges shortens the life of the printer. I've had my printer for ten years."

          "Yeah? Well you have to understand that I do a lot of printing. For the money I save on cartridges I can afford a new printer every year or so."

          It was a bit more of an exchange between us than that but trust me, he was a jerk. Finally he turned us over to Jerry, the guy working in that department. He took me over and showed me the actual printer that was set up on the shelf. We went back to the stacks of printers he was working on. The sign on this stack of printers said $177. The ones next to it said $279.

          "What's the difference?" I asked.

          "That one has smaller ink tanks. You get less prints."

          "Wait a minute. You get less prints and it costs more money?" I couldn't believe it.

          "It's not on sale," Jerry explained.

          Well, as it turns out, Jerry had the wrong signs on the wrong stack of printers. "Actually, these aren't even the right prices." He scanned them and found the $279 printers should be $249 and the other should be $149.

          "But I'll let you have it for $177," Jerry said.

          I hadn't even said anything. "Really?"

          "Yep. The sign said $177 — you get it for $177."

          So I got the Epson with the bigger tanks at a smaller price. When Jerry checked us out, he had to have a manager's override. "What's up?" she asked.

          "I had the signs on the wrong ones." He owned his mistake.

          She smiled, stuck her key in the register, punched a few buttons, turned the key, and took it out. "Where's that at?" she asked as she walked away.

          "I fixed it," he told her.

          "Yeah. He had it fixed before we were out of the aisle."

          Back out in the Jeep, I tell Mike, "My Canon still prints good pictures, maybe I'll keep that one just for pictures until I'm out of ink."

          "Just throw it away, Peg."

          When I got home and realized the amount of work it would take to clean and reorganize in order to have enough space for two printers, I decided to do it Mike's way. I took the old Canon out and set up the Epson in its place.

          Our bridge. This week they built the forms and put in the rebar for the parapets.

       

 

           They pulled the plastic from the deck and rolled it up.

 

          "There's the heating coils," Mike pointed out.

          With everything off the deck, they could actually drive across it.

          And did. They didn't need a pumper truck because the concrete truck could drive on it to deliver his load.

          Max is putting the finishing touches on this side.

          And this is the other side waiting to get filled up. 

          Once the first lift was poured...

 

...Duane climbed on top and knocked the wood spacers out. They didn't need them in there anymore.

          More pictures from that day.

          I like to stay on the good side of these guys and made them a couple of different treats this past week. Early in the week, I made them pumpkin roll. Actually, I was making pumpkin roll for others and had one to spare. So I took it to them.

          "Man! That was some of the best pumpkin roll I ever had!" Fuzzy told me.

          "I've never had it before," Max said. "It was good."

          Another guy, one I don't know, complimented me on it and wanted to know if I'd made it, which of course I did and told him so.

          We met this handsome guy this week and had a very nice conversation with him. Mike has worked for Susquehanna Valley Construction Company for 18 years and used to fight fires. He's fought fires all across our country. 

          "Whenever they needed me to help with a fire the boss would let me off to go fight fires," Mike said.

          "Do you still fight fires?" I wanted to know.

          He shook his head. "Naw. I ruined my body. It was hard work."

          Gary was standing next to him and volunteered an interesting fact. "You know he's white."

          I looked from Gary to Mike to my Mike thinking this is some kind of joke then the answer came to me. "His last name is White!" I guessed.

          "No, it's Russell and he's as white as you and me."

          Mike and I didn't know what to say.

          Mike just grinned but could tell we were uncomfortable. "I was adopted when I was eleven months old. My family's white, I lived in a white neighborhood, went to a white school," he explained. "I'm the whitest black man you'll ever meet!"

          I laughed.

          "Once, when we were working on a bridge down in Scranton, I'm the only black man on an all white crew. This black dude came up and said, 'What's up bro?' I said, 'Don't call me bro. I'm not your bro."

          Gary laughed. "Yeah, and I told you to shut up, you'd get us all killed."

          Mike looked at us. "And I told him to relax. That dud was harmless."

          "Are you married?" I wanted to know.

          "Nope. Divorced."

          "Kids?"

          "Nope."

          So there you have it. I even asked if he was okay with me writing about him. "Sure go ahead," he said.

          "So, can you drive on the bridge now?" Mike asked Gary.

          "Sure. I don't care. You can be the first one to drive across it — the first one that's not on the crew anyway."

          Mike and I did drive across the bridge and I got a picture to prove it.

          The guys went back to work and covered the just formed and finished parapet with burlap.    

          "Get a picture of the golf cart on the bridge," Mike said.

          There's your picture, Mike.

          The whole kit and caboodle was covered with plastic and the crew would be off six days (counting the weekend) for Thanksgiving.

          Black Friday.

          Did y'all tackle the crowds for the Black Friday sales?

          Normally, we don't. But Tractor Supply had cat litter and birdseed on sale. So, we went on yet another shopping trip. Only this one wasn't so far. Just over to Wysox.

          They were picking the field of sunflowers. By the time we did our shopping, had a sandwich at McDonald's, and came back around, they'd finished the field and were gone. 

          For as long as I can remember, the Wendy's sign has been broken. Well, they finally fixed it. I wonder if Steph knows how long it's been broken or how it got broken. I'll have to ask her.

          "I saw they replaced the sign but I don't know the answer to either question," she tells me.

          Mike thinks it got broken in a storm. Anyway, it's nice to see it's finally been fixed.

          Look what I found!

          "Pasta Roni?" you ask.

          Yes! The parmesan cheese flavor. I first had this when Patti made it for dinner one night while I was visiting Momma in Arizona and I've been looking for it ever since. This past week I found it in our little local grocery store despite that fact that I've been looking for it there from time to time. In fact, I didn't even find it when I found it! We stopped for milk and I decided to see if they were carrying it yet. There was an employee stocking the shelves close by and I asked for it. She went right to it. Maybe they carried it all along and I just couldn't see it, I don't know. But I'm so glad to have found it. It makes a nice little side dish for whatever we're having for supper and Mike likes it too!

          With nothing more exciting than that to talk about, let's call this one done!