In Which Sally Does Not Steal

I was home sick from work today and when there was a knock on the door, I was not actually asleep (I wish), but completely tired and a little fuzzy from the pain meds I’m taking. It was a UPS guy (and yes, he was young and cute, but I was sufficiently out of it that I did not check to see if he was wearing shorts despite the cool weather – remember, Austin’s stores stock more sandals than normal shoes all year long) with a package that I signed for, briefly wondered what Robert had bought from eBags, and then realized that the address was for the new apartment complex next door. I rushed to the end of the walkway to call him back, but of course by that time, the guy had run to the edge and jumped over while his truck below opened up the hidden door on top to allow him to fall straight into his seat (with some proprietary cushioning technology to protect him) and then started driving them both away as soon as the guy’s ass made contact, so I was too late. When Robert got home, he drove the package over to the other complex’s office, where it appears the intended recipient had already checked in worried about a package that hadn’t arrived. I hope that she bought her significant other something really spectacular and that will make a very good impression tonight.

Or perhaps, like me, she takes that whole “you can’t love someone else until you love yourself” thing seriously in a commercial sort of way and bought herself something special. Last night, I ordered a little Canon digital camera from Amazon that I’m very excited about. (So it’s too late to tell me I should have bought a different kind; don’t harsh my mellow, man.) (I swear, I was not influenced by the cute red case because I didn’t even know about it until it was featured alongside the memory card I picked out.) Its major disadvantage is that it has a somewhat slow shutter speed, so I am going to be limiting my sport photography to turtle and/or snail races and you all will have to forgo the pleasure of seeing mid-binky bunny shots unless I manage to figure out how to use the video recording thing and get extremely lucky. Last night’s (unfortunate) rabbit photo op involved Leo, who, having pulled some duct tape loose from underneath one of the overlapping rugs that cover the entirety of the floor in their room, was munching away like crazy. This seemed freaky and disturbing, but the constituent parts of duct tape are less different from the Petromalt hairball preventative gel that the rabbits love to eat than you might think. Clearly, this was a result of his body’s need for petroleum byproducts… or just further evidence that my mini rexes are primarily stomach. The fact that both rabbits have refused to eat a strawberry on two different occasions seems increasingly bizarre, the more strange, non-food items I see them chow down on.

When Robert picked up my pain medication on his way home (red roses and a bottle of Darvocet, a classic combination), he saw that the Albertson’s across the street from my old apartment is going out of business, as so many Albertson’s in the Austin area have done in the past year. I was completely loyal to that Albertson’s store for a couple of years, but I can see that a grocery really can’t thrive with a business model that is based on attracting customers who have anxiety about the totally crazy-dangerous drivers in the HEB/Blockbuster parking lot on the other side of the street and who have such dysfunctional levels of new-place avoidance that they will continue to shop there even when know that another store is better. (Perhaps one aspect of my criticism of the Theory of Planned Behavior model I discussed yesterday is completely based on the fact that I personally am insane. Hmm.) I mean, the new Whole Foods downtown has a parking garage that is so much like that of a busy hospital that I can’t stand to go there, but they seem to be doing a fine bit of business. These days, Robert and I shop at a combination of the new Wal-Mart across the street (that was featured in the Economist when it opened, which was a kind of weird experience), the HEB down the street, the Central Market, and the farmer’s market. There is not a typical mid-level grocery store in the bunch. This sort of shopping pattern is right in line with the “postmodern” consumer who defies simplistic segmentation schemes. I am so trendy.