A Friday List

Things I bought tonight:

1. barfi


2. cat food


3. carrots

More Wooden Bikes

Yet another wooden bicycle. Nifty. Neat. Comfortable? No.

Grocery Store As Surrealism

I'm lucky enough to have received an iPod for Christmas, and I've been enjoying it's powers for supplanting reality. While this can mean on the subway, it's most potent when you have music to transform your trip to the grocery store.

So as I found myself selecting vegetables last night while head bopping to Anubian Lights ('we could have a keggah, from the mecca'), I thought just how totally weird modern grocery stores are.

There are probably 30 types of processed cheese crackers. My store in Northern Illinois, USA sells frozen banana leaves. Big cases with huge chunks of raw meat just sitting on a shelf. The Shotguns News magazine. Plus the scents that are everywhere: flowers, fruit, the music of 'singing in the rain' before water is sprayed on vegetables, a bakery where bad bread smells good.

The iPod is a magical device. Usually the grocery store is just the grocery store. But last night, wandering through Jewel, each aisle was a valley of oddities. And on each trip, I found something newly weird. (Coconut flour? Rosehips tea?)

I Know That Number From Somewhere...

Since I got cellphone #13, I decided that I would be very careful to save *every* number that I ever dialed or call that I received. It didn't matter if I only called the plumber 2x a year, I wanted his number on hand.

But this strategy to work, you have to know what the number is--when you dial take out from Leona's, you have to remember that indeed, that is Leona's number. Etc.

And when I kept seeing 681-0544, I was thinking: I know that number. Who is that? It was so familiar, but I just couldn't possibly recall whose it was.

Why? Because it was my own. It was my home phone number. Which I hadn't really used in, like, two months?

I suppose that is a comment on my life now: I've had the same mobile number since 2002, despite something like 10 phones and 5 companies. I've only moved once in the past 5 years, put have had four "home" phone numbers. None of which I can remember.