First Starbucks in I don’t know how long. I forgot how gross I find it. Acidic, muddy, tastes a bit like pipe. Sandy pipe. My other options were unavailable and time was running short so I did what I had to do, got what I got to got, have what I had to have. One place was out of coffee, the other closed for the holiday weekend. Festivus.

I am getting an air conditioner on Wednesday. I’ve wanted one for a long time but never really needed it until recently. I don’t mind waking up in a sweat but that condition is not favorable at certain times. I am hoping to install it myself. That’s a bit of a challenge to myself but one of the selling points for this particular a/c is that it was easy to install. No drills required, apparently. I don’t even remember if I own a drill. I seem to remember buying or otherwise acquiring a basic drill set but why? I don’t do anything with that kind of gear.

I bought new clothes at the Lot-Less, if shorts and a t-shirt can be called new clothes. Not staying at home tonight and I forgot to pack a change of clothes. Fortunately there are clothes everywhere. Who knew? Lot-Less was a much better experience versuss the last time I tried that place. What I didn’t understand, and was not expecting, is that all their mens’ shorts seemed to be size 46 and up. I weaar 34 to 36, usually, and practically tore the place apart finding that size. Time was short, you see, so that added to the manic panic of the shortsable moment. A new white t-shirt and a belt, plus a fancy Lot-Less reusable bag, ran me $22.39.

I’ve been wanting to revive my receipts project. It is, of course, quite a time suck, but not as much as one might imagine. I have a way of finding efficiencies in all things and scanning those receipts was efficiency-finding at my finest. Trouble is I don’t know where my scanners are at these days. The ADF machine was a lemon out of the box, as I recall, but maybe I don’t need to go that route. I want to revive because I go more interesting places these days, at least by my reckoning. I gave up on the receipts because I felt I had proven my point. The Internet is a bottomless pit of endless column inch. What used to be a cute novelty piece of content in an alternative ‘zine or independent magazine became an avalanche of cleverness made utterly banal by its quantity. That was, in a nutshell, the original point behind scanning my receipts. In time I improved upon that idea, at least I thought I did. I added backstories and poetry, though it was not always obvious. You had to point your mouse at certain words for a story to rise up, or somesuch. I don’t remember everything I did with that but it was all wiped out by Chinese hackers, an incident that still makes my gut churn.

The content of all those hidden stories and poems might still be salvagable but getting it operational again would not be realistic.

A funny story I remember from that receipts project was the cashier at a Publix in Florida who heaped scorn upon me for buying nothing more than a small packet of celery sticks. Publix stores are generally pretty huge and she found it unfathomable that one could pick such a paltry item from this cornucopia of culinary abundance. I think her words were something “Why bother?” or “That’s all?” She was not even joking.

But who has time to write such things anymore?