A Pair of Mildly Disturbing Moments...

**On Monday I had the day off. Since I've been feeling a little blase lately (as is typical for March) I declared the day to be "Erinn's Day of Spring Renewal." I did all those wonderful things that I normally don't have time to do, like going to the gym, getting my hair cut, and buying some new shirts. My sister met up with me at the mall, and we decided to stop at Express. Their clothes have become a bit too trendy for me, but my sister wanted to look. I was innocently browsing the racks when I saw something that made me stop in my tracks and gasp. STIRRUP PANTS! I had all but forgotten that disturbing late 80s-early 90s trend! This caused a sort of mini-quarter-life crisis moment, in that I realized I am now old enough to see fashion trends coming back around. Holy cats....**

**For some reason I always have trouble getting out of work on time on Thursdays. (Actually every day, but that's a whole nother story...) I usually end up leaving sometime between 5:45 and 6:00, which leaves me an extremely awkward window of time to drive through the tail end of rush hour traffic, make it home, manhandle my car into the garage, find something to eat, drive to church, and make it to choir by 7:00. Tonight I left much closer to the 6:00 hour than I might have liked, so I thought to myself, "You know what would be extremely delicious and non-stressful to prepare? Chipotle!" Since there is one fairly close to my church, it is a convenient place for me to occasionally stop and eat dinner. The first thing that I thought was a little odd was that the man who made my burrito bowl asked me where I had gotten my coat from. (I was wearing my hot pink pea coat, for anyone who is wondering) I thought to myself, "Does he want to go and buy one just like it?" Anyway, by the time I had explained where I had gotten my coat, I was at the end of the line and ready to pay. Imagine my surprise when the cashier said, "Where have you been?!?!? We haven't seen you in maybe two weeks!" I'm pretty sure I haven't been to that particular Chipotle location more than 6 or 8 times in my life, but perhaps this is a sign that I need to cut back on the old burritos. It is never a good sign when the burrito masters greet you like you're an old friend...**

Ah, the Sweet Mysteries of Life...

One of my favorite things about living where I do is that I can walk to Lund's grocery store in under 3 minutes. I've always hated grocery shopping, so there is some degree of comfort in the fact that I don't need to get into my car and drive somewhere I don't really want to get to. I also quite enjoy my reusable Lund's canvas bag, if you want to know the truth. Grocery shopping is normally a Sunday afternoon activity, but since I am booked solid from 9:30 am to about midnight tomorrow, I decided that I should probably drag myself over there today.

It was one of those days. Normally, I can make it in and out of Lund's in 30 minutes or less, but after two trips around the store, I realized that although my cart was full, none of the foods I had, once combined, would create an actual meal. Does that ever happen to anyone else, where you buy a whole bunch of food but realize that none of it goes together? This seems to be a common problem for me. Anyway, I was most of the way toward having the ingredients for english muffin pizzas, all I seemed to be missing was the vital component of pizza sauce. Now, since pizza sauce differs only marginally from spaghetti sauce, I assumed that they would be sold next to each other. After pausing in that aisle for at least 5 minutes, I decided that it was not to be found, at least in that location. I next looked in the aisle that marked "Sauces", figuring that this would be a logical second choice. Again, conspicuously absent. "Perhaps they put the sauce next to the premade pizza crusts, since you can't really use one without the other," I thought to myself. Wrong again. Back to the spaghetti sauce aisle. Still not there. Is pizza sauce a condiment? An ethnic food? A dairy product? No, no, and no, I discovered after a few more trips around the store. I finally decided it was time to ask an expert, but it seemed that one man had engaged every last one of the fine Lund's employees in searching for some sort of Lebanese cucumber sauce, which it seemed no one had ever heard of. Finally, after about 25 minutes of searching, I cornered an employee who was able to tell me that clearly the pizza sauce was located underneath the Spaghettio's in the canned foods aisle. I should have known. And now you do. :-)

Stay tuned for next week, when I will attempt to solve the mystery of why the TCF (Twin Cities Federal, mind you) automatic teller machine cheerfully tells you "Thank you for banking with us!" in a very affected sounding British accent when you are done with your transaction. Maybe after that I will explain the national debt, once I figure out just who exactly it is that we owe. At least all these things keep life interesting...