Well, grocery shopping went very well. Tried out the new Publix north of me, as opposed to the one to my south. A little further to walk, but I was planning on paying my phone bill at the Southern Bell office up that way while I was there. Unfortunately, that’ll have to wait for later, as the billing offices were closed for Sunday. Upside, more money for foodies.

The checkout girl was adorable, and very funny. If I was a decade younger I’d have asked her out. She had something to say about everything I bought…

added aside. There is a Cran-Nectarine. Yow. A cran I’ve never had before. growing up in Massachusetts near the ocean spray factory, I developed a love-hate relationship with cranberries at an early age. I’d play out in the bogs where they grew (sort of like rice paddies, if you know how swamp plants are grown) and get chased all over the place by my pals in there, when I was about 7 years old. Wading waist-deep in puddles full of cranberry plants, not fearing snakes, spiders or anything else a little boy knows better than to be afraid of. I remember coming home soaking wet, covered with scratches and scrapes, and covered with pelt marks from having cranberry fights on ocean Spray Property. My mom would bawl me out terribly, and give me the ‘wait until your father gets home’ scare tactic. I OD’ed on cranberry at an early age, and wouldn’t go near it for about 5 years… most folks only think of cranberry sauce as something you eat with thanksgiving dinner, but I’d guess that we had the stuff 2-3 times a week. It gets old. The juice, though, is great, cranapple is just perfect.

…flash return to present . The checkout girl. woo. ok. right. Biggest points for her (in my mind) was her “Cheese!” comment, made like Wallace from Wallace and Grommit, right down to the hand gestures, and going up on the toes. I laughed aloud at that, something I rarely do alone and surrounded by strangers, and it felt good. I wonder if she has an older sister. (I try to date within a decade of my birthday. 🙂 )

We were driving down a long lonely one of those deserted stretches of U.S. highway somewhere in the Midwest, the great breadbasket of these here United States, when Stan suddenly remarked, “Get a look at that, Scotto, up ahead!” I did the squints and saw, to my surprise, a very large pool of viscous black goo up ahead where a good portion of the highway ought to have been. “What do you suppose that is?” he asked, and I said, “Viscous black goo, Stan, ain’t you ever seen viscous black goo before?” As I recall, there was something light and airy on the AM dial as we continued relentlessly forward. I forget what I was thinking about at the time, it was certainly Important in that special way we all have around here, and Stan said, “Do you suppose we’ll glide over the top of it?” and I said, “Here’s a ring around the collar says we find out.”

The front end of the car traversed some distance across the top of the pool before ultimately becoming mired, and the back end soon followed suit. We found ourselves sinking incredibly slowly, and what’s worse, reception was becoming poor on the ol’ AM. Stan said, “We can’t open these doors, can we,” and I replied, “That’s some goo, huh.” As the car sank, the view of the goo slopping up over the hood was duly impressive; the dim neon of a distant street lamp gave the whole pool of goo a rather luminescent quality. Man and machine, soon to be enveloped like dinosaurs in the tar pits, only god knows the dino- saurs never drove Toyotas. As the goo rose (or as the car sank, depending on how full or empty your glass is), we watched it squirm and slosh against the windows, teasing us a bit, and Stan said, “That’s some goo all right,” and I could only mutter, “Enthusiastic, ain’t it?” Soon I had to flick on the dome light, because the goo was up over the roof of the car. It was getting awfully hot and hard to breathe. Then Stan said, “What do you suppose’ll happen if I crack the window a little bit?”

What can I say? We were curious.