Obtaining groceries without a car can be somewhat cumbersome. Thankfully there are now (within the last few years) online services that will deliver groceries to you, just like on those ’50s television shows. But then when you lose your job those convenient online services tell you that they don’t take the EBT Card as a form of payment. That means I’ve been walking (or biking, or evening Zipcarring) to the local Safeway to get my groceries for the past 18 months. Ah, I do miss that EBT Card though…

So now that I am working 55 hours/week in order to make up for all that moola I didn’t make in ’09, and I’ll mention The Crash which has put the bike out of commish, it’s a little difficult to get to the grocery store. I decided to pull up my Peapod account and take a look at what they’re offering now that I’ve been shelf-shopping for the past 18 months. I found that I had an unplaced order already tallied up that I hadn’t set for its delivery schedule when I got the pink slip back in December ’08. Oddly enough, it seems pretty much in par for what I’d be ordering today. I’d have to add a couple of items to get that additional $1 off on the delivery fee though (on orders over $100)—like frozen entrees that I could take to work instead of spending $8 a day on lunch! I’ve still got a pretty well-stocked pantry, due to the EBT system providing much more purchasing power than I would use in a month, $200. So I’ve got boxed goods and canned goods for a while. Bomb shelter!

Item	Size	Qty	Item Price*		Total Price*
Produce Stand
Apples Granny Smith	1 EA	2	.99		1.98
Banana Green	1 EA	3	.39		1.17
Banana Yellow	1 EA	3	.39		1.17
Carrots Baby Peeled Organic	16 OZ BAG	1	1.99		1.99
Lettuce Red Leaf	1 EA	1	1.99		1.99
Lettuce Romaine	1 EA	1	1.99		1.99
Onions Yellow Organic	3 LB BAG	1	3.79		3.79
Meat & Seafood
Ground Beef 85% Lean Big Buy	APX 2.5 LB	1	11.22		11.22
Deli
Cabot Cheese Cheddar Sharp 50% Reduced Fat	8 OZ BAR	1	3.39		3.39
Deli Ham Virginia Style Cooked (Thin Sliced)	APX 1/2 LB	1	2.99		2.99
Beverages
Deer Park Spring Water – 24 pk	16.9 OZ BTL	1	6.49		6.49
Bread & Bakeshop
Nature’s Promise Naturals Bread 100% Whole Grain	24 OZ PKG	1	1.99		1.99
Nature’s Promise Naturals Bread Multigrain	24 OZ PKG	1	1.99		1.99
Cereal & Breakfast Foods
Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts Frosted Strawberry – 12 ct	22 OZ BOX	1	3.00		3.00
Snacks, Cookies & Candy
Doritos Tortilla Chips Nacho Cheese Family Size	17 OZ BAG	1	4.89		4.89
Giant Saltines Fat Free	15 OZ BOX	1	1.50		1.50
Snyder’s of Hanover Pretzels Sourdough Hard Fat Free	16 OZ BAG	1	2.50		2.50
Grains, Pasta & Side Dishes
Barilla Pasta Rigatoni	16 OZ BOX	1	1.79		1.79
Barilla Pasta Spaghetti Thin	16 OZ BOX	2	1.79		3.58
Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper Cheesy Enchilada	7.5 OZ BOX	1	2.19		2.19
Baking Goods
Guaranteed Value Sugar Cane Granulated	4 LB BAG	1	2.29		2.29
Condiments, Oils & Dressings
Giant Olive Oil Spanish Olives Extra Virgin	17 OZ BTL	1	6.29		6.29
Ken’s Steak House Dressing Fat Free Sun-Dried Tomato Vinaigrette	8 OZ BTL	1	1.00		1.00
Ken’s Steak House Dressing Healthy Options Parmesan & Peppercorn	8 OZ BTL	1	1.00		1.00
Sauces, Spices & Seasonings
McCormick Oregano Leaves	1.37 OZ BTL	1	3.49		3.49
Laundry, Paper & Cleaning
Brawny Paper Towels Big Roll 2-Ply Prints	6 CT PKG	1	8.99		8.99
Health & Beauty
Softsoap Liquid Hand Soap Antibacterial with Light Moisture Pump	7.5 OZ BTL	1	1.50		1.50

Either I’ve gotten too lazy or to old to go out and enjoy playing in the snow. We’re getting about 18″ already here and it’s still coming down. I was originally planning to go and do early Christmas with the fam today but that was wisely cancelled. I’m not about to get all bundled up and take a walk around the block with this much height of snow, even if the sidewalk snow is packed down, which I really doubt it is.

This storm, along with Tiger Woods, is why people shouldn’t start doing “Best of…” lists until the year is actually finished. Go December!

Funny trending topics on Twitter today are #snowpocalypse, #snowmageddon and @snOwMG.

Here are some pix, including the buried red Zipcar that I originally scheduled today.

I went home for Thanksgiving this year. I didn’t go last year. Speaking with my Dad last year he said, “I know sometimes you want to get together with your friends…”. I hadn’t missed a Thanksgiving in the last fourteen years I’ve been living here so I had no idea what he was talking about. But I took advantage of it anyway, and didn’t have to deal with the travel hassle of a quick trip. But this year I decided to go, since I hadn’t seen many relatives since February and I think Christmas is going to be a little “off” this year as my brother and his family will be going to visit my sister-in-law’s in New York state.

It turned out that renting a Zipcar was just as expensive as taking the train down to my Dad’s so I chose that option, which would give me greater flexibility about traveling times and definitely less stress about getting to a train station twice. I scheduled a 24-hour reservation, leaving Wednesday evening and coming back on Thursday, after the feast.

Since all Zipcars (thankfully) have iPod adapters now I was able to leave the seemingly-archaic CDs at home and just take my iPhone and play music from there. I put on Arcadia’s So Red The Rose and headed south, reminding me of those Friday nights headed to Badlands cranking the tape (EMI Catalog: 42148) so many years ago. It still sounded good loud, exhibiting its many nuances.

Upon arriving it’s the requisite sit-in-the-living-room-watching-History-Channel stuff, and then when it gets close to 9:00 I ask “Can you switch it over to Channel 5 so we can watch Glee?”. Well. About ten minutes into it my brother (my oldest brother) says “This would be a great show if they would stop singing.” Um, yeah, I think that’s kind of the point. He gets up and leaves and then my Dad, instead of watching the show with me, starts reading a road atlas.

Fast forward. It’s about 2:00am and after going to bed and listening to some music I decide it’s actually time to go to sleep but I toss and turn until almost daybreak. Looking back I think I was dozing in and out of consciousness but at the time it seemed like I was just laying there, awake.

At times the dim light coming through the cracked bedroom door would appear to turn red like a laser beam, but only in its color not in its concentration. Then it would cloud and flicker back to a warm dim yellow which seemed more natural.

Then, and I don’t know if I dreamed this or imagined it and whether it actually happened, I felt something, a cloudy presence, off to the right of my eye. It was a form, but not a recognizable form, that slowly changed and flowed as if smoke from a cigarette was contained in a glass sphere, swirling around and around but not dissipating. Was this the ghost or spirit of my mother, who had died in the bedroom down the hall two-and-a-half years ago? Maybe I was groggy and frustrated from not being able to attain sleep. Regardless, I looked at it for a while and said “Hi Mom, I love you.” and immediately fell asleep.

The next thing I remember is waking up a few hours later and hearing my dad in the kitchen making coffee. The remainder of the day would be filled with having my five-year-old niece read a story about Pilgrims to me, getting kisses from my nephew and catching up with aunts, uncles, cousins and their children and grandparents. There was a lot of family love there, I could feel it.

Freebies? Not exactly but I guess kinda on some levels.

One freebie is the credit balance on my Zipcar account, thanks to neighbor Sherif who houses the cars in his backyard lot. They give him monthly credit and every so often he’ll dole some out to me and other friends of his. Unfortunately the credit has an expiration date and I still had some that expire tomorrow. So I reserved one this afternoon (as well as a Mini convertible last Saturday) to do some grocery shopping.

Which brings me to the second freebie. While this is technically free, it’s that whole I’ve-been-paying-into-the-system kind of payback, and that’s my EBT card. Or as they used to be called pre-technology days: food stamps. Just like last time, I didn’t really need to stock up on anything other than perishables but since I had a car it was time to get more of things I usually can’t carry like bottled water. Plus I noticed that instead of having Club Card specials many of the hanging tags were advertising “new lower pricing” instead of Club Card-only savings. Subsequently, my Club Card savings wasn’t that much.

Pushed on by the drizzly weather I found myself buying comfort foods: tomato soup, deli turkey, stuffing mix, flavored mashed potato mixes. Oh, and Healthy Choice dinners $1.99 if I buy five or more? Sure, I’ll take six.

Purchase: $208.63
EBT Card Balance: $97.01
Club Card Savings: $21.90 (9% of purchase)