The Gold Medal

Place: Hardee's
Lunch: 2 chili dogs, Coke

Yes, Hardee's is selling chili dogs. They have chili in the kitchen, they're selling chili dogs, but they're not selling their awsome occasional chili cheeseburger. For that, I have to go to Carl's Jr.

Still...good chili dog.

The Summer Olympics ended a couple of weeks ago. I enjoy watching the swimming and diving competitions more than anything else. That camera that follows the divers from the board into the water is awesome, especially in high definition.

Men's gymnastics can be pretty good. I'm not that fond of the women's gymnastics because the girls are so young and it feels like exploitation to me. Watching the lifelong dreams of little girls crushed at the hands of snotty judges after they risk their limbs on balance beams and high bars just doesn't work for me.

Which...somehow...leads us to Aldi.

Aldi is a German-based grocery store chain with a small footprint low-price format. They have small stores with a small staff and an almost 100 percent inventory of store label products. Everything is ridiculously cheap. And pretty good too. I prefer many of their items to the national brands.

When I first encountered them about fifteen years ago, the stores all had manual cash registers and no prices on the products. The cashiers had every item's price memorized, and could rip through an order at lightning fast speeds. It was very impressive. And it's a good thing...They hardly ever have more than one line open at a time.

Today, Aldi has scanners. But the cashiers are just as fast as they ever were. So when a woman ahead of me in line today with an overflowing cart full of Aldi plunder asked "Would you like to go ahead of me?" I said "No thanks, I'm fine." Because I knew she'd be through the line in a flash.

Sure enough, the Aldi cashier ran everything through in less than a minute. He gave her the total, which was about $115, if I remember correctly. That's a LOT of stuff at Aldi.

She balks. "How much?"

She didn't have that much cash.

"How much do you have?" he asked.

It was less than $60 from what I could see.

Then she started returning items. So he's re-scanning and hitting "Void" on stuff. Which is a lot slower than scanning stuff for sale purposes.

I watched the receipt as it printed the voids out.

Twenty-seven items. Literally half the cart emptied.

Which brings us back to the Olympics.

I am certain that if overestimating your spending in a grocery store was an Olympic event, I just watched a gold medal performance.

Greatest Summer Ever

Place: Souper Salad
Lunch: Buffet (salad, soup, pizza, spaghetti, mac and cheese, loaded baked potato), Coke.

I'm willing to bet I drank twice my own body weight in fountain Pepsi this summer.

The local convenience store chains had a price war. QuikTrip (the greatest convenience store chain in the history of the world) was doing 69 cent 32 oz fountain sodas until Kum & Go came out with their 49 cent "Soda vs Pop" campaign. QuikTrip then went to 39 cents.

And I totally bought into it. I picked one up two or three days per week on the way to the office. It's my morning equivalent to you coffee drinkers.

I should probably quit. Or maybe exercise or something.

It was a summer of soda and driving. My poor car, which I took delivery on less than five months ago, has 22,000 miles on it already. It's been to 13 states, which do NOT include Minnesota or Colorado. Yet. To it's credit, the Rogue has been completely trouble-free, save for a slow tire leak, keeping me from having to take it into Satan's Nissan for anything.

I took a mindset that, in spite of how the year started, I was going to have the greatest summer ever. I didn't exactly manage that, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Any time I found myself questioning my eating habits or some such thing, an angry voice in the back of my head would shout "GREATEST SUMMER EVER!" And that was that.

I attended the Dublin Dr Pepper birthday party. My eight-day Utah sabbatical turned into a trip home to Oregon. I spread my wife's ashes partly in view of the Salt Lake area...and partly under a drive-in screen. I discovered the wonderful burgers at Freddy's. I saw Stephanie Smith live in front of a couple dozen people in a city park. I saw Deborah Fotheringham live at a truly odd benefit concert that I really should have done a blog post on (the three acts included a junior high school dance choir). I made it back to the Nebraska homestead and reunited with the cousins for my uncle's funeral.

But I'm ready for fall. Football is on TV again. Hockey is around the corner. I'm ready for cooler weather and snow storms.

I'm sure I won't completely settle in, but it's time to stay home more.