When I got crossways with my local not-liberal-enough-for-me church a few years ago, I took up spending time on Sunday afternoons at my local Taco C with a book to read. Taco C has a salad I like, especially when I load it up with pico, jalapenos, and cilantro from the condiments bar. I figure it's most of a day's worth of calories for me, but it's less than most of the food in that store, And it gives me a place to sit with a good book and get away from whatever else is going on in my life.
Yesterday afternoon, I left work a few minutes early because I had a sore throat and a headache. I had a couple of errands to run, and then I planned to stop by the Taco C closer to my office for a salad for supper. Some of the staff there recognize me because I've been stopping by after my Thursday-evening class for a while, and if I time in right, they get my order exactly right, even though I usually skip the rice and beans and ask for the chicken to be diced instead of sliced. It's also been remodeled recently, and it's always a bit cleaner than the one closer to home, which was actually infested with crickets the last time I was there.
Since I was running errands on the way to the taco place, I decided a short-cut would be simpler than taking Texas Avenue, which I hate. I turned onto a back street, then realized I wasn't sure whether I needed to turn on the first or second block off the main drag.
It wasn't the first one. I got a half-block down the road when I saw a "tortilla bar" I didn't know existed. It was in a nice, new, modern-looking building, and it had enough cars in the lot to suggest that the food might be pretty good.I had a paperback with me, and I was momentarily tempted to pull in and take some time to eat and read and find out what the new place was like.
But I had come this way in the first place because I wasn't feeling very good, so I made the U-turn and found my way back to the Taco C.
The store manager quickly dispensed with the customer ahead of me and greeted me with his warm, broad smile. "How are you today?" he asked.
"Not too good, which is a good thing for you," I answered. I explained to him about stumbling across the other taco shop and rejecting it in favor of the "comfort food" I knew I'd find at his store. At least there, I knew I could get something I know I like and I could take it home to eat it.
"Well, thank you," he said, and then rattled off my salad order exactly the way I wanted it. As he was ringing it up, he turned to the kid who was making it and told him to be sure to give me the diced chicken.
"Anything else?" he asked. I hadn't ordered a drink because I'd just gotten one at my last stop. "Sure you don't want another?"
No, I said, but I would take the senior discount.
"Ah, I can do better than that," he said, tapping in a code on his register. "How about free?"
"Really"
"You're a good customer, and you chose us today instead of the other store. Happy to do it for you."
Once in a while, things do turn my way!
Friday, July 27, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
Make that two
I just finished the Monday crossword puzzle using only the "across" clues. I had a typo, but I figured out where it was and got an "all correct" from the crossword checker!
Monday, July 16, 2012
The fun never stops
My kids' father has been experiencing an increasing number of ailments over the past few years, mostly attributable to a combination of age and lifestyle.
When all three kids were home a few weeks ago, they trooped over to his trailer park to catch up on him and discovered that he had been diagnosed with jaundice relevant to some likely damage to his liver. His doctors had indicated the problem might have been related to a prescription for some other ailment that contained, among other things, a popular analgesic. The dad had agreed to a change of prescription and had high hopes that his problems would be resolved.
DD called to check on him a few days ago and found that, indeed, he seemed to be doing much better on the new drug.
"So it really was the acetaminophen, then?" she asked him.
"Oh, no, it wasn't that!" he assured her. "It was just the Tylenol!"
When all three kids were home a few weeks ago, they trooped over to his trailer park to catch up on him and discovered that he had been diagnosed with jaundice relevant to some likely damage to his liver. His doctors had indicated the problem might have been related to a prescription for some other ailment that contained, among other things, a popular analgesic. The dad had agreed to a change of prescription and had high hopes that his problems would be resolved.
DD called to check on him a few days ago and found that, indeed, he seemed to be doing much better on the new drug.
"So it really was the acetaminophen, then?" she asked him.
"Oh, no, it wasn't that!" he assured her. "It was just the Tylenol!"
Friday, July 13, 2012
Futon Lady
I have a ridiculous feeling that I'm going to be known for a while as the Futon Lady at Sam's.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
I had decided to clear up some of the clutter on my second floor by ditching both the daybed I've had since Darling Daughter was in middle school and the hide-a-bed couch that I acquired around the time I moved into this house more than 30 years ago. But I still needed some sort of "guest bed" for the occasional visit by one or more of the kids.
Sam's had a futon that rather appealed to me, and I figured Darling Daughter and Number One Son could get it home and in place in time for the family reunion a couple of weeks ago; then at least most of my four kids would have places to crash.
I asked the kids to go by Sam's while I was on my way home from an out-of-town business trip, and sure enough, they were almost through setting it up when I got home.
One problem: it had undergone a serious bang at some point, and a chunk or two of wood was missing from one of the slats that makes up the "Shaker-style" back. The damage to the carton supported the story that someone had apparently rammed the box with a forklift at some point. So did the fact that the kid who had taken the thing off the shelf at Sam's had lost control of it several feet from the floor, and DD had endured some highly visible scratches and redness from slowing it down on its way to the floor. (Another story I heard later might put my kids at fault for the damage, but that possibility was pretty inconsistent with the damage to the box and the battered slat.)
We had no choice but to use the futon as it was for the weekend, and the damage didn't really affect the way it looked in the room nor the way it served as a bed, so I chalked it up to the "to do" list to see what I could make happen.
A couple of Sundays later, I grabbed my cell phone and snapped shots of the damage to the back of the futon and to the box and headed off for Sam's. I went through three or four layers of management before I got agreement to allow me to have NOS break down the futon enough to take off the back and the seat (which are one piece on it) and trade them in for the floor model, the only remaining futon in the store. That way, I'd still have the undamaged arms to the one I'd paid for but I wouldn't have the damaged back.
I left town that evening with instructions for NOS to find a truck he could borrow long enough to make the exchange. When I got home two days later, I had the store model in my house.
Turns out NOS had had a better idea: instead of taking off the seat/back assembly and returning them, he had ripped the single slat from the back of the futon at the house and tried to get Sam's to trade it for a good one off the floor model. Why he thought I had told him he needed a truck to exchange a slat is beyond me.
The management at Sam's was pretty perplexed by this kid showing up with a stick and trying to trade it in. After some consideration, they told him he had to bring back the entire futon, so he and his buddy dashed back to the house, hauled the futon downstairs and back to Sam's, and made the trade.
On their way out the door, the buddy noticed that the arm of the floor model was pretty badly scratched (duh; that was the reason I didn't want the floor model!), so NOS went back in the store, borrowed a screwdriver from the automotive shop, took one arm off the futon I'd paid for and one off the floor model, and took the "new" one home.
Only when he got there, the arm from the original didn't line up with the hinges from the floor model, so he happily drilled a new set of holes in the arm. And I still had a scratched-up floor model when I got home on Wednesday.
On Thursday, I went back to Sam's, back through four levels of management, and back to the area where they had "my" futon. I explained for about the seventeenth time that this time I wanted to bring in the arms and base to the floor model and trade them back for the arms and the base to futon I'd paid for. I was assured again that it would be doable if I'd bring in the parts I wanted to exchange. And I'm stubborn enough to figure out how to get all those parts into a Camry.
On Friday, I rolled a grocery cart full of futon parts into the front door of Sam's. (I had used a blanket to protect the parts in the car, and I tossed it over them because of a light rain as I headed for the door, so I'm sure I looked like a bag lady.) I think the only person in the store who hadn't heard about me yet must have been the man at the service desk who offered to help me. I carefully gave him the name of the highest-level manager I had talked to on Thursday and told him I was there to exchange futon parts. He made some of the special secret phone calls people in his position make, but before he finished the call, another service-desk worker smiled at me and said, "Are you the lady with the futon?"
Service Desk Man got a floor worker in to help me a few minutes later, and I wound up leading the kid back into the bowels of the store to where "my" futon was. I was armed with enough tools to break down and put together both futons, but the kid said he'd rebuild the floor model Saturday morning, when he expected the store to be quieter. He took one end of my futon and I took the other, and I had mine apart before he was half done. We sorted out parts to his and parts to mine, loaded mine up in my basket, and headed for the door.
Three or four other customers were in line when I got to the front of the store, so I waited for the ticket-checker to nod me through. She looked up and smiled and said, "Oh! You're the lady with the futon! At least it's stopped raining for you now!"
I'm not sure when it will be safe for me to go back...
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
I had decided to clear up some of the clutter on my second floor by ditching both the daybed I've had since Darling Daughter was in middle school and the hide-a-bed couch that I acquired around the time I moved into this house more than 30 years ago. But I still needed some sort of "guest bed" for the occasional visit by one or more of the kids.
Sam's had a futon that rather appealed to me, and I figured Darling Daughter and Number One Son could get it home and in place in time for the family reunion a couple of weeks ago; then at least most of my four kids would have places to crash.
I asked the kids to go by Sam's while I was on my way home from an out-of-town business trip, and sure enough, they were almost through setting it up when I got home.
One problem: it had undergone a serious bang at some point, and a chunk or two of wood was missing from one of the slats that makes up the "Shaker-style" back. The damage to the carton supported the story that someone had apparently rammed the box with a forklift at some point. So did the fact that the kid who had taken the thing off the shelf at Sam's had lost control of it several feet from the floor, and DD had endured some highly visible scratches and redness from slowing it down on its way to the floor. (Another story I heard later might put my kids at fault for the damage, but that possibility was pretty inconsistent with the damage to the box and the battered slat.)
We had no choice but to use the futon as it was for the weekend, and the damage didn't really affect the way it looked in the room nor the way it served as a bed, so I chalked it up to the "to do" list to see what I could make happen.
A couple of Sundays later, I grabbed my cell phone and snapped shots of the damage to the back of the futon and to the box and headed off for Sam's. I went through three or four layers of management before I got agreement to allow me to have NOS break down the futon enough to take off the back and the seat (which are one piece on it) and trade them in for the floor model, the only remaining futon in the store. That way, I'd still have the undamaged arms to the one I'd paid for but I wouldn't have the damaged back.
I left town that evening with instructions for NOS to find a truck he could borrow long enough to make the exchange. When I got home two days later, I had the store model in my house.
Turns out NOS had had a better idea: instead of taking off the seat/back assembly and returning them, he had ripped the single slat from the back of the futon at the house and tried to get Sam's to trade it for a good one off the floor model. Why he thought I had told him he needed a truck to exchange a slat is beyond me.
The management at Sam's was pretty perplexed by this kid showing up with a stick and trying to trade it in. After some consideration, they told him he had to bring back the entire futon, so he and his buddy dashed back to the house, hauled the futon downstairs and back to Sam's, and made the trade.
On their way out the door, the buddy noticed that the arm of the floor model was pretty badly scratched (duh; that was the reason I didn't want the floor model!), so NOS went back in the store, borrowed a screwdriver from the automotive shop, took one arm off the futon I'd paid for and one off the floor model, and took the "new" one home.
Only when he got there, the arm from the original didn't line up with the hinges from the floor model, so he happily drilled a new set of holes in the arm. And I still had a scratched-up floor model when I got home on Wednesday.
On Thursday, I went back to Sam's, back through four levels of management, and back to the area where they had "my" futon. I explained for about the seventeenth time that this time I wanted to bring in the arms and base to the floor model and trade them back for the arms and the base to futon I'd paid for. I was assured again that it would be doable if I'd bring in the parts I wanted to exchange. And I'm stubborn enough to figure out how to get all those parts into a Camry.
On Friday, I rolled a grocery cart full of futon parts into the front door of Sam's. (I had used a blanket to protect the parts in the car, and I tossed it over them because of a light rain as I headed for the door, so I'm sure I looked like a bag lady.) I think the only person in the store who hadn't heard about me yet must have been the man at the service desk who offered to help me. I carefully gave him the name of the highest-level manager I had talked to on Thursday and told him I was there to exchange futon parts. He made some of the special secret phone calls people in his position make, but before he finished the call, another service-desk worker smiled at me and said, "Are you the lady with the futon?"
Service Desk Man got a floor worker in to help me a few minutes later, and I wound up leading the kid back into the bowels of the store to where "my" futon was. I was armed with enough tools to break down and put together both futons, but the kid said he'd rebuild the floor model Saturday morning, when he expected the store to be quieter. He took one end of my futon and I took the other, and I had mine apart before he was half done. We sorted out parts to his and parts to mine, loaded mine up in my basket, and headed for the door.
Three or four other customers were in line when I got to the front of the store, so I waited for the ticket-checker to nod me through. She looked up and smiled and said, "Oh! You're the lady with the futon! At least it's stopped raining for you now!"
I'm not sure when it will be safe for me to go back...
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