The Lancome Lady
I can get better prices on Lancome products (yep, I am addicted) in Pensacola than I can in Kuwait, Seattle, or even the duty-free, so I stock up while I am here.
On my second trip to the store, not knowing if my stock will last until my next trip to what Mini-R calls PepsiCola, I again bought enough that the saleslady said I could have TWO free sets of the bags and make up samples and I just laughed – like really, how many do I need? How many can I use?
They are always shocked that I would turn down the “free” gift. But packing space and suitcase weight matters more to me than anything free, and also, I hate to waste.
I just laughed.
“What I really need,” I started off, “what would really help me is if you have any small samples I can take with me on the long plane rides, so I can put good cream on my face, not the airplane stuff.”
“Oh! We can do that!” she said, and started opening drawers, pulling things out.
“How about some of this – you bought some of this but here it is in sample form – and this – and you will want to try some of this!” she said triumphantly and handed me about a hundred sample packets.
But she was on a roll.
“And you will need a travel mascara! And how about some suncreen! And you can have some perfume samples, and share them with all your friends!” and a hundred more samples came out of the magical Lancome drawers.
Holy smokes! I can take care of my face, my eyes, and smell good too! Not that I wear perfume in the close confines of an airplane where it could offend the other passengers, but I have a lifetime worth of samples I can use at other times . . .
When I am in Seattle and ask the Lancome ladies for samples, they act very haughty (and I am thinking “excuse me? Who is the customer and who is behind the counter here?”) and usually tell me they don’t give out samples. No wonder I do my Lancome shopping in Pensacola! It’s not just the price, it’s the caring and generous customer service!
“Alien Babies!”
“Whaja think of the storm?” the young man asked me, as he dusted the magazines with a feather duster.
“Oh, wow!” I said. “I thought it would go on forever! How long did it last?”
“I don’t know,” he responded, “but it WAS a long time, and it was right overhead! Hey, this can’t be right. . . it says George Bush is involved in some kind of divorce!” He was dusting one of the tabloids.
“Naaahhh.” I said, waiting for my turn in line. “Sometimes they even write about alien babies being born. You know that can’t be right.”
He stood, transfixed.
“Alien babies?” he half whispered in astonishment. “No! Not really!”
“Yes! really!” I said, “and you know that can’t be true.”
“No!” he said. “No alien babies!” and then under his breath “alien babies!” half in wonder. He followed me around the store, from time to time saying in wonder “alien babies!”
Albertson’s supermarket hires mildly retarded adults to work as baggers and cleaners. These young people are trained to greet the customers, to accompany them to the cars if they have a basket, to unload groceries and generally to make the customer feel welcome.
I always feel welcome. These young people love their jobs, love being a part of the community, and they take great pride in doing their jobs well. God bless Albertsons for this enlightened hiring and training policy.
The Apple Market, Pensacola
The Apple Market isn’t a big chain. You can hardly maneuver in the aisles, they are so close together. They have their own deli, with Boar’s Head meats, they have a big section with deli-made food, made with fresh ingredients, that you can take home and heat – some are already hot! They have rotisseried chickens, they have fresh key lime pies, boutique breads, a whole huge refrigerator full of freshly made salads . . . the Apple Market is my kind of place.
I can’t imagine the odds against the family grocery stores staying in existence against the giants. But I can walk into one of the giants here – Winn Dixie – and walk out without buying a thing, the giant is so tired looking, so sterile, so packaged. What the Apple Market offers is personal service.
When I walk up to the counter with a container of “Mama’s Gumbo” they ask me if I have had it before, and when I say I have, and loved it, they recommend the Shrimp Loxlie, in the same brand, and recommend that I serve it over rice or noodles, to make it go further. I buy some, serve it over angel hair pasta, and it is a gourmet feast. They encourage you to bring your own re-usable bags, or buy one of theirs – they are earth friendly.
You pay a little more. I don’t mind. They buy locally, the produce is always first rate, and they have an amazing variety of goods in a relatively small space. I can always fine something to fix up for dinner there, and I always love the service. Give me The Apple Market over a big box store anyday!
Supersize Me
Have you heard about this movie? It is a documentary, and you might think “Oh YAAWWWWWWNNN” but this one really kept going. I love visiting our son; I learn SO much.
The creator of this movie decides that for one month, he will eat every meal, three meals a day, at McDonald’s. And he has to try every entry on the menu at least once. And if the employees ask him to super-size, he has to do it. It appeared that he also made a rule for himself that he had to finish every meal. I don’t know how he did it.
Before he does this, he visits three doctors, a cardiologist, a gastroentrologist and . . .hmmmm, maybe an internal medicine specialist. He has health care professionals who will do blood readings every week and weigh him in. He starts at 185 lbs and very low body fat, and his cholesterol and triglicerides are to die for – excellent readings. His girlfriend is a vegan chef, so he has been eating beautiful meals, but not a lot of meat. (He is not a vegetarian.)
We watch him eat many of the meals. On the third day, his system rebels, as he is trying to finish, I think, a double quarter pounder, and he vomits. It isn’t pretty. At one point, his girlfriend says he has lost his sex drive, and has far less energy than before.
At the end of the first week, his weight has gone up to 203 – 12 lbs in one week! Worse, his cholesterol is rising rapidly. The second week, he is feeling sick and the doctor says he is developing a fatty liver, from digesting all the fats and sugars he is eating.
At the end of the month, he has gained 25 lbs, his system is in total rebellion against all the fats and sugars, and the doctors have warned him that he must stop now to reverse the damage.
Threaded through this adventure are sides, where we learn how much sugar the supersized drinks contain, and that even the SALADS at McDonalds have sugar in them. The calorie count for one of the salads exceeded that for the Big Mac!
I have to admit, there is nothing like a fast food hamburger every now and then – maybe once every six months or so – but this movie is a must see if you are eating at a fast food restaurant even once a week. The “food” they are serving is so processed, it barely qualifies as food.
The man who conducted this experiment went on a vegan diet for a while when he finished, and it took 8 weeks for his blood readings to return to normal, and 9 MONTHS for him to lose all the weight he had gained.
This was a fascinating movie, and a must see if we want to counter the rising tide of obesity spreading around the world. If it were an illness, people would be mobilized. As it stands, obesity is going to kill more people every year than smoking. The narrator says this is going to be the first generation of young people whose lives will be shorter than their parents, thanks to fast food. See this movie! Take your children!
There is a post script, and another reason I love this movie. As we were watching, my son said “Mom, thank you for cooking all those dinners for me as I was growing up.” He and his wife are very exercise and diet conscious, and I am proud to say, they live very conscientiously, trying to recycle, trying to eat fewer processed foods. What a gift that “thank-you” was!
Missing You, Adventure Man
I’m eating here, all alone, in a booth for one, surrounded by a million other customers. Son and his wife are at work, and Sonny’s isn’t their favorite place. It’s low brow, it’s folksy, and oh, how I miss southern barbecue when I am back in Kuwait.
The waitress, Tammy, is country and sweet and cares about all her customers, I have the fried catfish with Sonny’s baked beans and a side of cole claw . . .I have my non-sweet iced tea, I have my Sudoku . . . missing you too much, Adventure Man:
A Day at Home Depot
Those of you who read this blog regularly know I have a thing about hardware stores . . . Lowe’s, Home Depot, Ace . . .I can spend hours.
Right now, however, we are doing some renovations on a Florida house, and oh! I am learning so much. I am learning that the very best contractor can’t guarantee that a project will be brought in during the time he promised, that supply lines get kinked, that when you think you have made a very complicated decision (like what kind of counter top you want) it branches into a whole lot more decisions (electrical outlets, wall treatment, edge treatment, sink choice, faucet choices, hauling away and tearing out of original fixtures, plumbing fixtures. . . ) and oh, my head was swimming. It took two hours just to arrange something I smugly thought I had thought through.
Thank God there are people who know a lot more than I do, and who can make me face the tough questions.
As I was leaving the Home Depot, the skies broke loose and water poured down. I waited at the entrance about half an hour, thinking it would lighten up. When it lightened – a little – I ran to the car, but was totally soaked, shoes, clothing, hair – there wasn’t a try spot on me. And the rain continued to pour down. I thought of how badly Pensacola needs this rain, and how welcome rain is in Kuwait, and Doha, when it comes. I sat in the car another half hour, as the rain was flooding through the parking lot, and you couldn’t see very far.
As I was working with the counter-guy, he asked me how I liked living in Kuwait.
I told him I liked it.
“What are the people like?” he asked.
They are good neighbors,” I replied, “A lot like the people in Pensacola. They are believers. They are kind, and generous in spirit. And Kuwait has it’s own beauty, you just have to open your eyes to seeing things in a different way.”
I didn’t tell him about you, my blogging friends, because I’m not sure he is familiar with blogging. And because even here, I treasure my privacy.
Finally, the rain lightened enough for me to drive, very slowly, home, trying to avoid places in the roads where the drains were stopped up or clogged, and water was a foot deep or so. Made it home safely, al hamdallah!
Oyster Barn in Pensacola
When I said I wasn’t that hungry, just wanted a bowl of soup, something like clam chowder or gumbo, my son’s eyes just lit up.
“We could even walk!” he said. “It’s close!”
We didn’t – not that night, because I was really tired, and jet lagging, but I walked back another day to get an outdoor photo for you.
You’d have to know about the Oyster Barn to eat there – it is a tiny marina on a bayou, and out on the main street, there is no indication that this little gem is hidden back along the shore. You just have to know.
And a lot of people DO know. When we got there, the parking lot was packed. We almost went somewhere else, but we decided to give it a try. And there was one booth just emptied, just right for us. It’s the kind of place when you walk in everyone is trying to figure out who you are, because mostly it is packed with locals. You won’t find this place if you are a tourist.
This isn’t a fancy place, but it has great local seafood. The waitress appeared promptly to take our orders, which here, always start with iced tea (“Sweet or UnSweet?”)
My son and his wife had the Jumbo shrimp, which comes with “two sides” – my son had hush puppies and cheese grits, and his wife had salad and hush puppies. The servings are generous, and oh! those shrimp are SO good. They have a peppery-cajun coating that is both spicy and delicious. We finished with a very tart, very authentic piece of Key Lime Pie, all of us so full we all shared one piece with three forks. Life is sweet.
I had the oyster stew – and it was full of plump, juicy oysters. I took a photo of the stew, but it didn’t do it justice – all you could see was a milky looking base with lumps.
My Mom is coming with me next time I visit Pensacola, and this is one of the first places I will take her. I know she will love it. Although it is in Florida, it is very much like the places we used to eat when we lived in Alaska.
Flash for Sparkle: Atlanta 1
My sister, Sparkle Plenty has a blog on which she writes about only GOOD things, the tiny light that defies the darkness. As I was enduring my trip back this time, I thought of her when I got to Atlanta.
In fact, I was so impressed with this flash of light that I stopped, unloaded my camera from the carryon, and juggling my carry-on, my venti and my camera, walked the kilometer or so that this exhibit was staged between the A concourse and B concourse in Atlanta.
I am so glad I did. It totally lifted my mood, and it felt like a gift from the city of Atlanta. These are all statues by Zimbabwean artists – yes, plonked down as a public art project in the middle of the Atlanta airport. They must have paid a fortune to ship these statues, to create the huge posters on the walls showing crafts and scenes from Zimbabwe, poor Zimbabwe, in it’s steady downward spiral, these artists pull miracles out of the hat.
This was one of the wall posters, featuring Zimbabwean hand woven baskets:
Bravo to all cities that spend a little so that we can be lifted out of our everyday doings and taken to another world of texture, ideas and line. Bravo, Atlanta!
Burner Phone
As soon as I arrived, I turned on my “burner” phone, which I bought the last time I travelled in the US. This phone is also called a “throw-down” phone; people in illegal trades use them all the time. They cost like $14.95 and you buy minutes for them.
Unlike the expensive phone I have been buying a new chip for almost every time I come to the US, this phone powers right up after almost three months of never being used, has full power, still has the same number, which I discover is good until NOVEMBER, and even though I dropped it into the cat’s fresh water the first day I bought it, it works. It works.
How can something so cheap be so sturdy and so functional? It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of my more expensive phones, but it does everything I need it to do – I can make and receive calls, I can make my own phone book, I can speed dial . . .
and it makes me laugh to think I have a drug dealer phone. Hee heee heee, too funny.
Travel Woes
Adventure Man says a successful trip is one where the number of landings equals the number of take-offs. With that in mind, I can’t complain about my most recent trip.
I can’t complain that once again KLM cancelled my flight and didn’t bother notifying me. I can’t complain that they made another reservation for me that I found while trying to reserve my seat. I can’t complain that when I went to check in, the other airline showed me on their screen that KLM LIED and said they had tried to notify me (believe me, they have my phone number, they can text me, they can e-mail me and NONE of that happened) but couldn’t and they failed to provide the ticketing information, and the flight was full. I can’t complain that I had to haul all my baggage back over to KLM, stand in the very long angry line and be invaded by people who thought they were too important to stand in line and would walk right up the the harried ticketers and insist on being handled right now.
I can’t complain that I ended up on a FOURTEEN hour flight next to a four year old who threw up half way throught the flight.
The number of landings equalled the number of take-offs. I arrived safely, and my baggage also arrived. Thanks be to God.
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