Shopping with a list - what a concept.

I basically look in the fridge and the cupboard to see what we need, and then I go to TJs and then also Safeway to get the missing items. While in the store I'll specifically spend a fair amount of time in the produce aisle getting fruit that's ripe and on sale and I know the kids will eat. And then I also buy specific items for meals I already have planned for the week.

Since I do the cooking its frustrating for me when JZ shops because she buys things which don't "go together" (in my mind at least).

Because I've got an unadventurous teenage eater, a picky preschooler, a vegetarian and my omnivorous self, there's only a smallish overlap of meals I can make in the Venn diagram. When Emmett's here I buy a lot more meat (mostly hamburger). When he's not, I buy seitan and tofu and make stir fry.

RE: Reverse culture shock. Jon and I had a hard time with how quiet everything seemed here when we got back from India. And how neat and clean and movie set like everything looked. Felt like being in The Truman Show or something.

I learned "poftim" from BBC's Top Gear! It means, like, "here, have a thing," right?

I've needed this word!

God, I want my snippy TWC tech back. This chick is useless. Do they have macro buttons for inanities? If she expresses sympathy one more time, or calls us a team, I will need to take a walk.

I'd bet folding money that's some new Customer Service philosophy they're required to follow now.

Since I do the cooking its frustrating for me when JZ shops because she buys things which don't "go together" (in my mind at least).

Jon does this sort of. It's more like he decides he's going to say, buy in bulk one day. Then he cooks for 2 days to freeze stuff, but it's just the 2 of us and no way were we ever going to eat 15 dozen eggs or 10 pounds of meat, even with freezing, before we are sick of it or it goes bad.

I use the supermarket flyers to wrap up worm food. Because none of my local papers will deliver to me except the one that annoys me so much I don't want to give them money. But look at the ads and decide what to get based on them, hardly ever. That would mean going to the store in the same week that I decide what I'm buying, for one thing. And I can't deal with coupons - they expire and they are too specific and even if they would apply to my purchases I never remember to bring them with me (or if I do bring them with me, I forget about them by the time I have made it through the aisles and it's time to check out).

It's a damn good thing I have boxes of produce appear on my porch as if by magic once a month.

I make grocery lists, but my big semi-monthly grocery shopping trip is always to the pricier store in my town because it has decent produce and I've never found mold in the just-purchased bread.

Well, this is different.

It's foaming outside.

It's foaming outside.

um??? Huh. Seems to just be dreary and windy here in Owings Mills. Really windy on the way in. My little car was getting shoved all over the place.

If she expresses sympathy one more time, or calls us a team, I will need to take a walk.

Sometimes we get dinged if we don't "express empathy" or "get buy-in from the client." Because I'm here to be your friend and sympathetic companion, not here to just fix your damned computer and get on with life. We know it's garbage, but the public relations people need to justify their salaries somehow, and the CEO read an article on the plane last week about improving customer relations.

Sometimes we get dinged if we don't "express empathy" or "get buy-in from the client."

She was entirely "Oh, honey, I feel your pain, let's hug it out." It was offensive. And I'd have rated that specifically lower than the previous tech who sniped at me and gave me information that contradicted the web site.

But I'd have been sure to be explicit in both cases about what was annoying. They were both pretty poor experiences. While skimming my email I found chat transcripts from years ago with Time Warner, and they were also comically bad. So not much has changed.

So the tea I bought last weekend says to use 5-6g for one cup. I decided to be all anal and weight out 5-6g. That doesn't fit into one brew basket, and a brew basket full brewed for the time they mentioned in 5oz of water was disgusting. I'm not sure what that was about. White tea shouldn't taste like that, I'm pretty sure.

DId you have the water at the right temperature? I am told that makes a big difference with white teas.

Because I am concerned about the directions being wrong. I am invested in the tea you were conned into buying being better than that.

I wasn't precise about the temperature (it tells me 85-90° C). I just grabbed it before the boil the first time. This isn't the con tea, though (that was Teavana Jasmine Pearls--this is Lupica White Peony). That tells me to use a teaspoonful, and it works just fine. Why would I use more than a basketful of leaves?

I just made a cup that brewed a minute with about two teaspoons of White Peony leaves with whatever temperature of water comes out of the work hot water spigot, and it tastes decent.