TJ's does excellent samosas and spanakopita.

Their spanakopita is on regular rotation in our house. Hell, half of what we eat is Trader Joe's. One of my favorite quick TJs meals is to sear some scallops (which don't HAVE to be from TJs, but mine are) and serve them over TJs Thai Lime Rice, with some of the Bean So Green veggie mix on top. Good stuff.

(Tonight's non-TJ-based dinner is grilled cheese and tomato soup. Did you know it's COLD out there? That calls for grilled cheese and tomato soup, definitely. It's merely a bonus that that's the one meal I can get Tim to cook.)

So, it's like you could have 10 houses in a row, but houses 1, 2 and 7 are on one fuse; house 3, 4 and 6 are another fuse, etc. And you can end up with patchy neighborhoods, where 10 out of 20 houses are served by the same substation, but the other 10 are served by another substation?

In an urban area, those houses probably get power from at least two substations, because there are interconnections for redundancy. If something takes out some of the interconnections, the power can reroute in ways that don't seem logical. It also could be that one set of houses is on one transformer and the other set is on another. What's hard to visualize is that electricity goes where it's sucked, while things like water go where they're pushed. If something is asking for power, the electricity will try to get there. (Yes, I'm blithely ignoring physics.)

Water can be sucked too, actually. The dynamics of pressure in the pipes are important. (The things you learn, living with a hydrologist for 15 years.)

Seen on Facebook: floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. I may have swooned.

Wow. We're closed tomorrow too: due to the extreme cold.

Hell, half of what we eat is Trader Joe's.

Tonight, I will be having Trader Joe's Orange Chicken over Trader Joe's Organic Brown Rice with a Trader Joe's Chicken Egg Roll on the side.

I wish we were closed tomorrow. Actually, today's snow day was the first one I've ever experienced in the 18+ years I've worked at this company. We've had days when they sent us home early, but they've never told us not to come in at all before now. The 1999 storm that dumped a few inches more than today was mostly on a Saturday, so the work schedule wasn't affected.

Dinner tonight was scrambled eggs--I was feeling lazy. Put in pepper, garlic salt, and a mixture of green herbs from Penzey's (thyme, sage, and a bunch of other stuff), cooked it so that it was still pretty moist, and yumminess resulted.

I hope my last thought when I die isn't, "Jesus, that was stupid. Why did I do that?"

I could do worse than having mine be, "Wheeeeeeeeee!" For instance I was just making a sandwich and booty dancing to They Might Be Giants. I was multitasking and on a rug, it could have gone badly. But no sharp knives involved and now I am happy and have a sandwich.

That said, watching the BIG storm waves? A bad idea in general. That's not a wheeee moment.

I have to say (confess?) that I mind TJ's prepared foods extremely hit or miss.

I am TJ's bitch but I agree. I love them for ingredients. But I am wary on their prepped stuff. I do LOVE that they demo so much. For every couple things I realize I don't like, I find seven or eight that happily enter my tummy.

But the ones that are good are worth the hunt.

Totally.

Trader Joe's Orange Chicken

That is the best-selling food item. Best overall is Charles Shaw wine. See? I love the demos! It's something to try and sometimes interesting facts too.

Trader Joe's Orange Chicken

That is the best-selling food item.

I love that stuff, and it makes my gluten-free heart cry bitter tears that it's breaded. I mean, I *can* eat a little of it and be okay, but I *hate* having to assess every possible gluten ingestion. Have I had gluten this week? If so, how much? How recently? And regardless of the answers to any of those questions, how does mah belleh feel right now? Can I risk having some Orange Chicken, or spanakopita?

I'm usually copacetic with the GF stuff, but sometimes it drives me batshit crazy. Sometimes I just want some goddamn Papa John's pizza.

I am big about not going out to watch weather phenomena. This comes from having been in multiple tornadoes. If it's at all cool to see, it's probably not a good idea for you to stand out in it and look at it.