Monday Meanderings - 9.7.2015

I hope that this Labor Day brings you a time of rest and relaxation with good friends and family - and perhaps good things to eat along with that.

I guess I'm going to have to work on my demeanor - my public persona, if you will. The other day we were standing in line at the Deli Counter; Barb was ordering some sliced ham and I was hanging out with the shopping cart a little ways behind her. It was not crowded, we were not in a hurry, and we had been served in a timely fashion, but I must have been scowling, because the clerk at the counter leaned forward to Barb and said, "If that man behind you is giving you any trouble, I'll call store security."

Other than appearing suspect, it was a good shopping day. About once a year Walmart gets new shopping carts, and for a few weeks, if you are observant, you can get a cart that does not go thump-thump-thump or veers one direction to the other. Sadly, the rest of the year you have to put up with bad carts.

While we were in California we got an urgent call from a representative of Austin Energy who was anxious and eager to get our permission to trim our back yard trees near their power lines. We worked out the permission issues and from his sense of urgency we expected to arrive home to find workers hard at it. It's been a month and the crews are not even in our neighborhood yet. Guess it wasn't that urgent after all.

I've heard about them and seen articles about them but not until the other day had I seen someone actually using a "selfie stick." We were in a rather nice restaurant and I kept seeing something hovering over a nearby table. At first, I thought someone was waiving a menu to get the staff's attention, then I realized what it was. It seemed to be a long drawn-out process; the photographer would hold it aloft, snap a shot, then reel it in and check the picture (because of course, you can't see how how the picture is framed), then she would hoist it aloft and do it all again. Several times. No wonder some places are banning these things!