Grump grump grump. First of all, I HATE the Apple Mail application. It is evil. That is all I have to say about that. You don’t even want to know. And today the fire alarm went off at work and I grabbed my keys and my purse (with my iPhone in it) and my MacBook life and ran outside. Why? Flames? Smoke? Not. I ran because this particular alarm makes just about the loudest obnoxiousest screech you could possibly imagine. It is not like any alarm I have ever heard before in my entire life. And I was *terrified* about the fire alarm back at old Stinkin’ Lincoln. ENH ENH ENH ENH … ENH ENH ENH ENH! But this alarm is *directly* over my cube! Honestly, it is almost physical pain for anyone with even moderately well-functioning ears. My brain was just screaming. Of course, it was a false alarm. But it sure got me outside.

Anyway, there really *is* something to this whole walking to the grokkery store thing. I vaguely remember wondering, back when I was first working full-time again, how it would change my relationship with the Westgate Kroger uscan. I have a long relationship with the Westgate Kroger uscan and with the Westgate Kroger in general. I shopped there when I lived in the upstairs apartment on Seventh Street and I shopped there when we lived in the upstairs apartment on Jackson Road. When we moved over here to the Landfill, we had to train ourselves to make a left turn at the Jackson/Maple intersection when we left the Westgate Kroger instead of going straight. That was so many years ago. The Westgate Kroger closed for a couple weeks once (I *think*), remodeled a few times, endured a strike (I did *not* shop there during the strike, those people were my friends), moved down the road a bit, got remodeled a few more times, almost went on strike again. That’s almost 30 years folks. I used to go “up north” to Fin Family Moominbeach for a few weeks in the summer and the Westgate Kroger would be just about the first place I would hit when I got “home”. I can remember walking out of there late on a Sunday afternoon one time after one of those vacations. It was hotter than Hades and I ran into a Chinese friend of mine (also named Anne, of all things) in the parking lot. It was one of the first times that I felt like the Planet Ann Arbor was truly home. Or one of my homes, at least. I am a vagabond. But, there we were, a Chinese woman welcoming her old tired American friend home. If it can be home to someone from China, I guess it can be home to me too. But now that the Plum Market is a couple blocks away, it is just too easy to drive home, park my vee-hickle, grab a grokkery bag and walk to the grokkery store. Is it more expensive? Probably. Who cares. I don’t have to deal with eight traffic lights and construction to get there and back. But I will have to spread my wealth tiny little collection of shekels around and I will definitely give some of those shekels to the Westgate Kroger.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 7:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.