Fred and Valerie

The Garden Phlox has finally bloomed! They’re also growing to be quite tall.

In other garden news, the Lamb’s Ear continues to grow and is getting to be huge.

We also have a snake in the grass! From what I can tell, I think it’s a common garter snake.

It all seemed simply enough in the beginning. Kroger was having yet another 10-for-$10 sale and this time it included various Shady Brook Farms turkey rolls. Since we eat a LOT of turkey in our meals, we decided it would be a good time to stock up.

We first tried to fill our freezer with turkey last weekend. Unfortunately, the Kroger in Waynesboro was out of the rolls and we figured we’d just try again later.

“Later” came in the form of Saturday night after attending a going away party in Charlottesville. We checked out the Charlottesville Kroger and they were out of stock, too, so we asked for a rain check. Simple enough.

But this is where things took a turn for the worse.

We figured it’d be worth checking the Kroger in Waynesboro again to see if they had any stock. This way, we could stock up and then use the rain check later to stock up again. So, instead of taking a left to go home after exiting the interstate, we took a right and headed towards Kroger.

On the way to Kroger, we passed something (we still don’t know what) that smelled awful. I mean AWFUL! Burn-your-nose awful. We should have taken this, and the Kroger’s continuing to be out of the turkey, as a sign to just go home.

We didn’t.

We arrived at Kroger at 11:10 pm and walked to the freezer section and, thankfully, they had the turkey. I filled up a hand-held basket and went back to the front of the store to get another. By the time I was done loading up, we had something like 10 rolls of turkey breakfast sausage, 10 rolls of turkey Italian sausage, and 20 rolls of regular ground turkey. 40 rolls of turkey in all.

For those of you playing along at home, that’s $40 worth of turkey. This is important to remember later on.

We went to the checkout line and the teenage girl started scanning the turkey rolls. Because they were frozen foods, they were getting the scanner glass wet and, after the first few, stopped scanning properly. The girl complained that this always happens with frozen foods and I wondered why she didn’t just keep the frozen foods off the glass to prevent the condensation from ever transferring. Alas, she didn’t and the scanning went very slowly.

In an effort to speed things along, I went to the end of the checkout counter and opened up some plastic bags to start bagging the turkey rolls and I waited for them to come my way.

I waited some more. And some more. It took the girl a few minutes to realize what was going on, but she finally got the hint and turned on the conveyor belt to allow me to assist.

Finally, the girl finished scanning the rolls and that’s when the REAL fun began. It turned out that our 40 items that were part of the 10-for-$10 sale didn’t add up to $40. Valerie and I both pointed this out to the cashier. After a few moments of confusion, the girl decided to start randomly voiding items to see if we could get to an appropriate total.

We didn’t.

After voiding 10 items, the total was still messed up and the girl called what we thought was a manager.

She wasn’t.

A woman came over and took a look at things and decided to go “get the gun.” The “gun” is the scanner that they use to order items throughout the store. The woman brought the “gun” over and scanned each of the three different rolls to find out that the breakfast sausage was the culprit.

Apparently, looking at the receipt to see which items didn’t have a savings deduction after them wasn’t a viable enough option.

Now that we know it’s the breakfast sausage, it’s smooth sailing, right?

Wrong.

The woman managed to void out the breakfast sausage rolls, but then the register required a manager override because of all the voids. At this point, 19 items had been voided thanks to the cashier randomly voiding 10 items earlier. While trying to figure this out, Valerie and I noticed that the totals now read that there had been 21 items scanned and the total was $21. This is what we wanted and we pointed it out to the employees.

Surprised, they figured everything was okay and the girl re-scanned 19 ground turkey rolls. This time, she miraculously figured out that she shouldn’t rub the rolls on the scanner glass.

It was finally time to pay and I swiped my card and everything was going great. Then, the register beeped and the girl said there was an issue with the voids. She asked if the account we were using was good, as if an issue with voids had anything to do with our bank account, and we assured her that it was.

In an effort to keep this as short as possible, I’ll just say that the next 15 minutes were spent trying to find a manager override because that’s what the register required for checkout after so many voids. It seems there were no managers on duty and no manager overrides to be found and not a clue about how to proceed.

A few phone calls and discussions later, the woman who discovered the breakfast sausage culprit returned to let us know that we would have to re-scan everything on a different register. This time, however, they could just scan one and do a quantity of 40.

We happily obliged and moved to another register. The problem is that our original cashier was still logged on to her register, which means she couldn’t log on to the new one. The “gun” woman didn’t have a logon code, so she called a third woman over. It should be noted that this third woman had come around previously, but wasn’t good for much other than talking with our cashier about how their paychecks were going to be wrong. Apparently, these particular Kroger employees can’t grasp the concept that pay periods don’t always go from paycheck to paycheck. They may actually go from a few days before a paycheck to a few days before the next paycheck. This appears to be lost on them.

In case you were wondering, that’s not all they talked about. We also got to hear our cashier complain about her teenage brothers and sisters. Just what I want to listen to in the middle of the night.

So now the third woman comes over to the register and the “gun” woman asks her for “her numbers.” I assumed this meant her logon code and the third woman, in the most deadpan manner possible, responded, “Oh, I’m not allowed to give out my numbers.”

I seriously almost busted out laughing. About this point, Valerie and I started wondering where the cameras were for Candid Camera or Punk’d or Boiling Point or some other catch-unsuspecting-people-on-camera-in-hilarious-predicaments show.

The “gun” woman then told the third woman to come over to the register and logon and the third woman kept mumbling about how someone told her to never give out her numbers. As if we cared. As if it mattered. As if national security was riding on her keeping her “numbers” to herself.

Once the third woman was logged on, the “gun” woman essentially pushed her aside, scanned the turkey, changed the quantity to 40, and had us checkout.

Upon reaching the parking lot, Valerie and I laughed so hard that I didn’t think we’d stop.

In the end, it took us 45 minutes to buy $100 worth of turkey rolls for $40. I’m not complaining, but it certainly turned into an experience that we never anticipated.

The last two weekends have turned into “Movie Night” and we’ve managed to see some great films. Here’s the rundown:

• Pan’s Labyrinth is the story of a young girl who escapes the horrors of her life by way of fairy tales. Quickly, the line between real-life and fairy tale blurs and the viewer is left to wonder what’s real and what’s not. In the end, the visuals, story, characters, and so much more make for a spectacular movie and make it a “must see” for anybody. Be warned, some of the scenes are a bit violent. This isn’t a child’s fairytale.
• Blood Diamond takes the viewer into the heart of the illegal diamond exchange that arose in Sierra Leone. The story focuses on a man kidnapped from his family who finds a large pink diamond while working for his captors. He hides the diamond, rather than turning it over, and the adventure ensues. Often violent, shocking, and disturbing, this movie is not for the faint of heart. If you can stomach the atrocities that are too outrageous to be fake, you’ll see an excellent movie.
• Children of Men is the story of a world where women can no longer become bear children. Suddenly, a woman is pregnant and she must be ushered to safety. Another violent film that will keep you on edge with some shocking events, it’s well worth watching. We were a bit disappointed in the ending, but the overall movie was good.
• Who Killed the Electric Car? is a documentary about (drumroll, please) the demise of the electric car. It’s surprising to watch the death of the electric car and to hear how lame the excuses were for not keeping them a reality. It’s also a bit disturbing to hear some of the same excuses and put-downs that are starting to find their way into the realm of hybrid cars. This movie will make you think twice about how dependent we REALLY need to be on oil, whether foreign or not.
• The Queen is not, in fact, a movie just about royalty. It’s a movie about royal family being thrust into the 20th century, often times kicking and screaming along the way, after the death of Princess Diana. At times, you’ll be flabbergasted by them and at other times you’ll feel sorry for them. A movie worthy of all its accolades and worth watching.
• Letters from Iwo Jima tells the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese. As an American, it was often times confusing to feel sympathetic for men whose country attacked our own. Still, these are everyday men who are fighting for their country in a way that American soldiers fought for theirs and who are deserving of honor and respect just like any other soldier who stands up for their country and what they believe is right. An absolute “must see” and we’ll definitely be following it up with Flags of Our Fathers, the story of the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Americans. (Note: Letters from Iwo Jima, though directed by Clint Eastwood and made for American screens, is completely subtitled with Japanese dialogue.)

Throw a dart and hit one of the movies above and you’ll be sure to have a great Movie Night.

I got interviewed by FloridaToday.com for an article about in-laws. Good stuff!