“Remoted” – Day 375 (Friday)

‘Twas another day when things were done. It started with logging onto the work the computer early to get a jump on the emails. The inbox usually has a healthy dose of professional subscriptions and news articles to start the day before the flood gates release the deluge of sales letters. 

COVID inspired landscaping.

At 8:00, it was a trip to Family Dollar for a couple things that were postponed all week long with the infamous game of "I’ll go at lunchtime … after work …. definitely tomorrow." It’s wonderfully quiet and tidy in Family Dollar when they first open and the store hasn't yet been ravaged by the day's customers. Thanks to the fact that people are slobs, the small bushes near the parking lot were adorned with blue masks entangled in the branches. It’s New Century Modern Plague décor, and very popular, apparently. By 8:25 I was back at the desk again. 

After work, it was a trip to the Post Office, which, like the trip to the store, had been delayed every day since Monday. The intent was to get to the Lowell Post Office before the 5:30 pickup at the drive-up mailbox. After not driving in it for year, I forgot how hellacious 5:00 traffic is. 

It took a good five minutes to exit my dead-end street with limited egress. I ended up taking a right turn because it was my only shot at getting out, even though the intended destination was to the left. Due to the right turn, the destination was altered to the Dracut Post Office. This was not entirely bad, as it took me past Hannaford, which sells beer and ice cream and became the prize for enduring the traffic.

Of course, once in the store, an additional $20 of items was gathered, as if I was possessed by some demon spirit of impulse purchases. Refrigerated pie crust and biscuits, Cape Cod chips (on sale!), Veggie Straws, cookies, and my favorite Post Great Grains Cereal plus orange juice to go with it. And I see the eye rolling over the orange juice on cereal bit, just like some colleagues in our Thursday meeting when I mentioned it after a conversation about the trendy new “cereal milk” for coffee. First, I don’t like milk, and second, in the cereal commercials there was always a bowl of cereal with milk, and a glass of orange juice next to it. Milk plus orange juice is far grosser than orange juice on cereal. Try it if you don't believe me.

Nick's is good.

The big winner was Nick’s Swedish Style Light Ice Cream. I have seen about 10,000 ads for this stuff in my Facebook feed and the highly addictive Woodoku game over the past month. Of course, I ignored the first 9,500 appearances, then began to get curious and finally visited the website. The flavors are interesting – my test container was Coffee Karamel, which tastes pretty good. The best part is the calorie count – the entire container has 240 calories, which is about as many calories as a half cup serving of everything else. This is great news for anyone who eats the entire pint in one sitting, because really, a half-cup is just enough to piss you off and not nearly enough to satisfy. That might be just me, but I doubt it.

On the way home from the Post Office - Hannaford run, I had the benefit of a right-hand turn to go to the ATM and deposit a couple checks I’ve had for several weeks. Yes, I could have deposited them using my phone, and no, I did not do that. Overall, that first hour after work was quite successful. The rest of the night crashed and burned, but at least I have that one personally productive hour to look back on.