Almost slugs...

About the only place I get nervous about having "correct change" in my pocket is when I visit Aldi's, which is (to me) a relative newcomer in the grocery business. There's one not far from the new house, located right across the street from a Kroger "Signature" store (where "signature" here means that all the prices are pretty high).

Aldi's doesn't have a lot of variety to offer, but you can take care of your day-to-day needs. Eggs are an apparent loss leader, at 99 cents a dozen for "large" eggs that seem somewhat larger than "large." Milk is pretty cheap, too. In fact, I can't really think of anything in stock that's on the expensive side, except for perhaps the Shiner beer, which is priced to simply be competitive with everyone else in the area.

The "correct change" angle comes into play because the chain has equipped its shopping carts with mechanisms that daisy-chain them together, literally. To obtain a shopping cart, one inserts a quarter into a slot, which disengages a catch mechanism, so that the chain that connects the cart to the one behind it in the "stack" comes out and you can wander wherever you want, to your heart's content.

If you want your quarter back, however, you pretty much have to return the cart to the cart area, insert the chain from another cart into the back of the catch mechanism, which thereupon frees the quarter.

Based on personal observation, this a pretty effective system. Carts are not left in the parking lot once people transfer their purchases into their cars, and I've seen this both at the Aldi near the new house and the one Galina and I used to visit in Kemah. (I figured this might be a "stream of income" for a panhandler, but no—people are really motivated to get their quarter back!)

Anyway, in recent days, I've received a Chinese yuan coin (from Aldi's!) and an Indian 2-rupee coin in change, but both are just a slight bit too large to fit into the slot of an Aldi shopping cart. (My attempts were made in the pure spirit of scientific inquiry, honest!)

Who the heck is supplying these coins in this area, I wonder?

Cheers...

Miserable day for work...

I got about two hours of work done this morning, then I went to the old house to help Galina out, involving a lot of exercise, and while it did not immediately tap me out in terms of fatigue, I've had one heck of a time getting back on task today.

The weather is just too damn nice!

Ok, it's certainly late in the day, but...

...I've officially declared today to be a day off.

When I went to the old house this morning, I weighed myself and was quite surprised to find that I'm at 206 (or about... 93.5 or so kg). I feel somewhat lighter, but then again, that's probably my imagination.

Galina came by and we stopped by Aldi's for some groceries and then onward to the new house where I did something vaguely pizza-like in the oven and she made a nice salad. I tried adding some mandarin orange slices to the salad (I think I saw that somewhere) and it turned out well.

Apropos of Aldi's, I've concluded their restocking algorithms sucks, which basically means that if I like one of the products available in the store, I should buy a reasonable amount to hold me for a while.

Case in point is eggplant, which was available in copious quantity the last time I visited and absolutely absent today. (Okay, possibly a blip.) But then there's the packaged cheese slices (cheddar and swiss), which have not been restocked in several days. Heavy cream (my weakness for lightening coffee) was out of stock for almost a week. On the other hand, the eggs today were 74 cents a dozen.

Elementary is about to come on. I think I shall go watch it instead of working.

So there!