Eggs. Eggs. Must get eggs. I’d been tasked with this important task because it wouldn’t be a weekend without breakfast.
To the meat lab. This is all in the timing. If you went early the eggs would not be there yet. If you show up late they’ll be gone. (They are a good deal, and popular with the in-crowd. They have a sign with the bad news that they’re out of eggs. They do not have a sign for when they run out of pork chops.)
I walk in. There is one flat of eggs left. Thirty delicious eggs at a terrific price and these are the last ones for the evening. I ask the lady working there if they are spoken for. She says yes. Crestfallen, I glance around at other things and, having failed at the original mission, decide to purchase nothing. I turn to leave.
“You’re not going to buy the eggs?”
Didn’t you say they were someone else’s?
“No. I meant that’s the last of them.”
Well. They are spoken for, then.
Moral: Don’t count your eggs before they are in your refrigerator. (If you count them in someone else’s refrigerator, you should get permission first.)
Visited the big blue box store, because I had to see what the hubbub was about. The place was packed like Christmas was coming or snow had arrived. It was all very orderly though, with people stopping and staring at exciting things like brushes and notebook paper for the longest amount of time.
I checked out behind a handsome elderly couple. They just managed to sneak in under the draconian Express Lane rules that most people do not bother to acknowledge. The lady staffing the register checked them out in silence. And then she struck up a conversation with me, offering me a credit card application and asking about my day and wishing me well. She did none of these things for the couple. Maybe she just talks to every other customer.
Moral: A leopard can’t change his spots, but you can pick yours.
Also hit the local bike shop, where I needed their help making two small adjustments to my bike. They have a tool I don’t — they have a lot of tools I don’t — which is required to make this particular pedal-to-crankset change. I learned this important, and costly, lesson last spring.
Picked up some new shoes, talked about chain lubrication and the upcoming chain replacement that I’ll be due. Chain work, he said, can sometimes open a Pandora’s Box. Because, really, my repair-and-upkeep luck needs the help.
“It might be more than the chain,” he said. “There could also be problem with the cassette.”
Or the derailleur. We could find out I’ve been riding around on the wrong tires. There could be a problem with the satellite in a neighbor’s home, and this responsibility to fall to me.
“But it could be just a chain,” he said.
Moral: It is never just the chain.
