Unannounced. Unheralded. Barely mentioned. We’re to that point now, were you don’t even acknowledge that more of this happened today:

I don’t even think that was in the forecast. So, naturally, it snowed all afternoon and into the evening. At least it will be sunny tomorrow, and we may hit 60 degrees on Sunday.

I was thinking of that as I walked up the street to Studio 5, where this took place.

We tell students you have to do a lot of boring work to get the good stuff, sometimes, and today was one of those times when it paid out.

For two years this show has wrapped every episode with the joke “Tune in next week when Jesse Eisenberg and I …” and some silly activity. Tucker’s said that for two years. Today the punchline paid out when Eisenberg, who’s in town visiting family, declined a dozen other requests and spent a few hours with our show.

At the end of the show he did a bunch of the things the show had been promising. The production went well. That video was from my phone; the actual show will be released Sunday and it has real production value. The crew were thrilled.

It was a great moment for them, and he was so gracious with his time and input. We’re all terribly excited with how it all came together.

After work it was to the grocery store. I bought many items and nearly broke the self checkout system because of it. One needs supplies, though, and sometimes a great many supplies. A problem with the self checkout is that you must put your item in the bagging area, which is finite. And if you move things out of the bagging area, or don’t put an item immediately in the bagging area, the register is not pleased. Do that enough and you start getting warning sounds. Donk! Donk! And if you do that enough an error message appears on the screen: someone will be coming to assist you.

Not that I need the assistance.

Not that anyone is coming.

It’s a symptom of our times, I suppose. A system designed to element staff has reduced staff to such a degree that there’s no one serving in an oversight capacity.

And if you’ve ever stood in line behind a person in the self checkout area — or me, this evening, I suppose — you’d wonder how prudent that is. But, hey, Friday. Weekend ahead, groceries going in the trunk …

I had to type it three times. The first two managed to come out grocers. As if I was stuffing people in the back of my car just because of where they worked. What a way to begin a terrible short story: “He never liked florists. Or butchers. Something about the way they smiled and smelled. Cashiers and stockers, they were guilty by association, and so they’d have to go, too. Not all at once, of course. There was only only so much you can steer in a cart, just so much you could put in the trunk of the car. But if you are precise, if you are crafty, you could manage before the next bulk mail circular went out, or the store owner really noticed.”

Which, hey, for the first draft of a bad short story, might be OK. Feel free to work on it this weekend, punch it into something good.