The last few days…

… have been a whirlwind. Every time I wanted to sit down at the computer and actually get something done (like Pogo badges and blog entries — the important stuff!), I’ve gotten sidetracked.

Shame on me.

Last night we broke down and bought a laptop. There was a good deal on a Toshiba at the Navy Exchange, so we snapped that up. Figuring that Kurt would be absolutely no good company at all, I ended up going to my friend S’s house. I tried to get her to join us for dinner, even enticing her with the promise of a flaming alcoholic beverage at the Mongolian BBQ, but she was too tired to haul herself all the way down to town.

I don’t blame her. But it would have been fun, nonetheless.

I showed up at S’s house at 9:30pm, or thereabouts. I got stuck in some gnarly construction traffic because the gods have decreed that every single construction project slated for this county must be started and completed this summer. There is no way to get to town, let alone out of my neighborhood, without getting stuck in at least fifteen minutes’ worth of back-up. There are no alternate routes either because those too are being worked on. Why they have to do all the projects at one time is mind-boggling to me, but hey, it’s Washington.

Once I got to S’s house, she gave me a beer and we sat and watched tv. Of course, we didn’t actually watch it because we were too busy discussing important issues, like why every R&B music video nowadays features some big-name R&B artist, even if said artist contributes nothing to the song.

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but the next thing I know, it’s 5:15am and I am still at S’s house. Oops. At least now I finally know what it looks like outside when Kurt leaves for work in the morning!!

Did you know the sun is already starting to rise at 5:15?? I had no clue. I’m so not a morning person.

Today we were supposed to visit with some of the guys from the ship. They were coming from this side to harvest some used parts off the inactive ships (“Why get a new part, when you can jerry-rig an old one!” should be the Navy’s motto), and Kurt figured we’d meet up with them and do something. The original plan was to have one over for dinner, but then it turned into two and possibly lunch as well. All plans were scrapped when neither of them called.

Serves them right. No home-cooked meal for them! Instead we had chorizo (ie, Mexican sausage) wrapped in toasted tortillas and garnished with salsa and shredded cheese, and a salad as as side. Mmm yummy.

But since it’s Thursday, we had lunch at the bakery. My friend the owner has decided she wants a tattoo of her kids’ names on her arm. Somehow I have gotten roped into driving her all the way to her chosen tattoo parlor tomorrow afternoon.

I’m taking full advantage of Kurt’s being home to be with Grace, can you tell? It’s so… freeing to know I can go off with this girlfriend or the other and have Grace taken care of by her father! It’s quite a lovely feeling, let me tell you.

I feel so popular right now.

While I’m off doing that, apparently we’re to have another showing of the house. This is the first one in at least two weeks, so I’ve really got my fingers crossed. We’ve made some other arrangements in the furniture (I put my lingerie dresser into the closet and moved my big dresser into the corner where I had my lingerie dresser; it makes a huge difference in the openness of the “master” bedroom), and we also bought new pillows for the couch. It can’t hurt to make the house look as pretty as possible!

We also stopped at the commissary today to get a couple of gallons of milk. As is customary, two gallons of milk turned into 35 items total. Really the only thing we splurged on was the chorizo, and it was so damn good it was worth it.

As we’re standing in a relatively long line for 5:30 in the evening on a non-payday Thursday, I notice a bunch of “Self Checkout” signs at the far end of the checkstands. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, people?! Where did those come from?

Apparently on Monday, the day the commissary is closed, they were installed. Amazing. I can’t believe our commissary has now joined the 21st century.

The problem, however, is the self-checkout registers are entirely too smart for their own good. There is one register that is 40 items or less, and the other four registers are 15 items or less. If you have more than 40 items, the register won’t let you ring any more up. I kid you not. Yes, we’re the military, and we get treated like children. Harumph.

The self-checkout was just the biggest clusterfuck I’ve seen in quite some time. I am pretty technically savvy, and I will choose to go to self-checkout if at all possible when I go to Safeway or Wal-Mart. I’ve been a cashier, and I can do it quite well on my own, thankyewverymuch.

But this self-check took the cake. When you scanned an item, you had to wait till the register informed you of the item’s price before you could set it on the belt. Once it was on the belt, you had to make sure it scooted down to the very bottom before you scanned another item. If you tried scanning another item too soon, it would void the previous item, back the damn thing back up to the scanner, and insist you re-scan the item.

And to boot, not everything was in its system! I tried scanning both a 5-lb bag of red potatoes and a 5-lb bag of granny smith apples, and the register told me assistance was needed. The woman manning all the self-checkout registers ended up in my lane no less than four times, which was quite embarrassing for me. There was nothing I could have done any differently!

It took me probably just as long to wait in the 40-item self-checkout lane (there was just one woman ahead of me) and to check myself out, as it would have taken for me to wait for the fifteen people ahead of me in the regular lanes to check out.

Oh well. You live and you learn, right???