In Which I Say a Variety of Unrelated Things In Order to Remove Caramel Cob From the Top of the Page

I would like to announce that I have fixed my refrigerator. Huzzah! It is no longer leaking water into the freezer compartment. However, it now runs approximately 15 hours a day. Maybe it always did that I didn’t notice. Thus, I still might buy a new one, and not only because I enjoy walking around the second floor of my local Sears calling out, “Hello!” and then listening to it echo back. “Hello … hello … hello …” Sears used to be a lot better. Witness:

Perhaps that wasn’t the best example.

I think I’ve mentioned that I worked for Sears when I was in high school. I was quite useless in that job as it required interacting with people in a personable way, but since about half of their employees were high schools students, surliness was something of a watchword. When I worked there, it was a huge store. The building spanned a city block, with two smaller buildings on the next block. It had three floors of merchandise, and a fourth floor of offices as well as one of those horrible department store cafeterias where furniture and appliance salesmen would go to have pot roast and coffee at lunchtime. The store was always crowded and busy and smelled like corndogs and peanut brittle. Today the same store occupies only a third of the building and seems deserted whenever I go in, which I do occasionally when I need a curtain rod or a George Foreman Grill and don’t feel like driving all the way to Target. I was there recently and saw an employee who I used to work with in 1980. I think she was even wearing the same clothes. The store keeps getting smaller and sadder, but she’s still there. I can’t decide if I feel bad for her or not. There’s something to be said for finding your niche early in life.

To update you on another previous item, you will also be relieved and/or indifferent to hear that I found my khaki shorts. They were in the couch. I don’t know. They were stuffed behind the couch cushions. I don’t know.

In other news, I am overdue for my biennial good cry. I mean, I cry a lot anyway, but it’s usually just a couple of tears after reading something sad or seeing a skinny dog. But I’m in the mood for a big old BOO HOO WAAAAAAH! kind of deal. I think it would clear the decks, so to speak, and let me get through the holiday season with equanimity. The rules for the good cry are that it must be prompted by something that’s unfortunate but ultimately inconsequential, and it can’t be a pretty cry that makes other people want to cry along in sympathy. It has to make your face sort of scary or it doesn’t count.

While in non-news, last night I was watching some tabloid show and they were interviewing Jon Gosselin. They asked him if he thought Richard Heene, better known as Balloon Boy’s nutty dad, is a bad father. I have little opinion about the Gosselins beyond, “um, are they somebody?” but even still, is Jon’s input on this at all necessary? It’s not as if people are sitting around saying, “Gee, I don’t know what to think about Papa John Phillips either. What does Jon think?”

And finally I will resolve a seasonal question that arises repeatedly in my stats this time of year, namely, “have fun-size Snickers shrunk?” The answer is, “yes, and what the hell is up with that?” Disappointment. We are not strangers to it.