I just had a huge clusterfuck trip home from Costco. I bought too much stuff to carry home, thinking that since I was using coupons, that would counteract the cab ride. So I get done, call my regular cab company, and they say 7 minutes, like they always do. I wait approx. 10000 minutes, during which time, the sky opens up. I finally call back, and she says, they are having some problem and no, they aren't coming for me. ?!?!?!?! It is pouring rain, so other cabs are dropping people off, but I can't seem to position myself to hail any of them. Finally I get a ride with the guy standing by the door, who is not actually a cab, just a guy with a truck. Good times. Well, his rate was reasonable, and he didn't do anything weird, but still. I have literally never gotten into the car of a guy standing somewhere offering rides before. Anyway, I'm home with mass quantities.

I'm glad he wasn't an axe murderer. But really how many axe murderers hang around Costco?

Glad to hear Owen's surgery went well.

I am heading home early. Gonna let the kids play at the school playground instead of subjecting Frances to the afterschool program.

it was a plot point in a musical I just saw that the bad guy had a Costco membership, but he wasn't an ax murderer, just gun-totin'.

I am also glad he wasn't an axe murderer! There are probably fewer gun-toters at Costco in NY than elsewhere, I'd imagine...

That's a good bet.

I am also glad he wasn't an axe murderer!

Yeah, I would have been doomed to one day think "Boy Jesse hasn't posted in a really long time."

Edit: Not to make it all about me. I realize that your getting axe murdered would be a suboptimal outcome for you too.

it was a plot point in a musical I just saw that the bad guy had a Costco membership, but he wasn't an ax murderer, just gun-totin'.

I just had to see that again. There's no part of that statement that I don't love.

I, too, am glad Jesse's ride wasn't an axe murderer.

And I'm so, so very glad that everything went well for Owen!

Oh yeah, Yay Owen!!

The cracking thing sets off my cutesy-etymology spidey sense.

It's always seemed synonymous with Georgia/Florida poor white although in North and Central Florida, at least, "cracker" denotes native-born, with no negative connotation.

I think cracker always refers to rural Southerners, with an implication of a lack of sophistication and conservative and sometimes racists views. There is a real theory that cracker came from whip cracking, but it was the whips of the some of the early settlers of North Florida/South Georgia, who were essentially cowboys raising cattle for meat on semi-unclaimed land. The slave thing is just nonsense. Even if true, the whip crackers were usually overseers, who were hardly rich.