**addendum to previous post

key food is the name of this establishment. not "key foods" as would be grammatically correct. i know my irritation with this oversight is a telltale sign that i'm white, as per "stuff white people like" but it's annoying. i'm getting multiple foods to eat - not just one. 

15 items or less

tonight i went to the grocery store here in brooklyn. i'm not talking about a bodega. this was a full-fledged grocery store with aisles, a deli, and even a parking lot. it's one of those places that's right by my apartment that i always forget about. i rarely "cook" for myself beyond steaming some veggies and cooking a piece of meat on occasion. most nights i stick to a bowl of raisin bran and lactaid (gotta love the my gallbladder-free, lactose intolerant system) so i don't really bother going beyond the deli around the corner. 

the cats in all of the bodegas in the area frighten me, but i figure there can't really be any cat hair in my sealed corrugated cardboard (biodegradable i'm sure) carton of lactaid. i should note that i just finished reading "freakonomics". i say this only because i really think they should do a study on "why do bodega owners always have cats in their stores?" cats can be smelly, shed, and really don't guard the place from any robbers. i can't imagine they keep better company with these guys than all of their buddies that are constantly visiting them throughout the day. i'm not sure if it's advantageous economically, but i do wonder about any causality or correlations it may have in sales. but i digress...

this grocery store i hit up tonight had ample supply for me to stock up for the bbq i'm having this weekend. i had brought my NYer cart - an item of shame for me but shockingly handy when shopping in the neighborhood for bulky items. so i charged through the store, filling up an entire cart full of foodstuffs. when i got to the checkout there were 2 lanes open: no's 1 & 5. 

numero cinco had a line of 4 people while lane 1 had none. completely empty. had been since i entered the store - probably around 10 minutes. without looking up, i entered lane 1, ready to empty my cart on cue. in a former life i was a grocery bagger. i held the job through my junior year of high school, and not to brag, but my skills in packing groceries are unrivaled by most of my skills outside of the office beyond facebooking and recreationally drinking. 

immediately the bagger stares at my cart and mumbles, "mifteenitemserless". sadly i've lived here long enough to translate that to its true meaning "15 items or less". 

fine. i get it. i had too many items. that's not what killed me about the situation. it was the five employees all standing near checkout staring at all the people in line as they waited. and how the express worker didn't offer to take any of the other 4 people waiting in line (who all had 17 items at max) to her line. and that out of the 15 lines of possible checkouts, only 2 (really 1) were open. if you have the gargantuan grocery store and ample customers, flaunt your services a little. show a little pride. 

while i'm on it, i should also note an important feature of the parking lot. to dissuade anyone from stealing any carts, all entrances/exits to the store are surrounded by a fence only large enough for a person to fit through. this means that anyone who has parked a car in the parking lot must leave the cart in this little holding pen and carry the bags to the car instead of rolling it to its spot. for me this evening, i had to position my cart in such a way where it tilted under the bars. i then had to put my hands through the fence to grab it on the other side without it tipping over. i achieved this feat with no droppage of my cargo, but it was a close call. my wavy lays were almost lost to the sidewalk of prospect ave. and immediately i was thrown from my grocery fantasy back into the world of bodega cats. the moment of serenity was fleeting, but as long as i'm not paying for gas i can't really complain. if i'm honest about it, this will probably be my only trip to the grocery store in the next 2 months. i can fool most of the world into my "maturity" through big words and early bedtimes, but my messenger bags and cereal for dinner will always get me in the end. 

say cheese

i have an aversion to being spontaneous in photos. i'm fine when i'm directed to smile or freeze and strike a pose, but something evil takes over when people capture me in a "moment". half the time my eyes roll up in my head, the other half i look "like i'm about to die" as one friend put it lovingly this weekend. 8.1 megapixels somehow captures every awkward physicality i possess into one frozen frame. it's sort of a miracle of modern technology. like canon added a feature on their cameras that refuses to capture me in my natural habitat. or so i hope. i can live with this unfortunate curse in photography, but do i really look like that in real life? is my mouth often open awkwardly? do i gain double chins with a quick tilt of the head? are my eyes constantly red and irritated and my forehead crinkled? this is what happens when you work in advertising. you can be concerned with this over saving people's lives. thank god no one's cameras are yet in HD. i'm fascinated by looking at all the celeb's imperfections while watching awards shows in HD. i'm just not ready for that reality with myself. 

journey to the center of the earth

recently i played in a touch football game in roosevelt island. if you're not familiar with this magical place, do not feel bad. it's a tiny sliver of a land mass located just east of manhattan - between the big island and queens. it's best known for an incident some years back, when the tram that runs between roosevelt and manhattan left a handful of passengers swaying over the east river. i have been there exactly two times in my life - both times to play football - and i can't really see any reason for traveling to the destination if you don't live there. from what i can gather, it's an alternate universe for those who want to live near the UES, but can't deal with the rent. it's quiet and unassuming, and a complete bitch to get to when the trains are not running properly. i was able to find my way to the island after some tricky subway maneuvering, but once there i had NO clue as to how to get to the field. i had brought with me a zoomed out googlemaps print-out with the field name highlighted, but it lacked any street names. apparently roosevelt island is akin to the town in 'twin peaks'. none of the employees at the duane reade next to the subway knew any of the streets on the island. i had wrongly assumed that the islanders all knew the places of their community. i also wrongly assumed that the folks working at the subway station knew the area. (turns out they all live in brooklyn.) lucky for me, the subway folks knew north from south (i didn't) and were able to point me in the general direction of the field. by luck i ran into another guy from my team who was over 45 minutes late for officiating the game prior to ours. of course 2/3 of our team had the same issue that i did and we started the match two people short. fast forward to the post-game report. i was able to wander my way back to bizarro duane reade and eventually back to my home borough. i'm not quite sure which borough roosevelt technically belongs to, but i doubt i will be returning to it often enough for it to be something i need for my repertoire. i want to be the type of new yorker who freely travels between borough borders, but i'm not sure i can be so altruistic. besides the tram, i'm not sold on this roosevelt. teddy's fine in my book, as is fdr. this island however, is in the same realm as daytona beach. it's just not my kind of party.