I had a few errands to do, so I showered, dressed and went out into the world to see what I could get done. You never know what might happen while you are out, maybe something you didn't expect or maybe exactly what you expected... ho hum.....
One of the places I went was Dollar General. There are two very close to me, so I went to the larger one. I needed some T-Paper because last night I found I was taking out the last roll. How does THAT happen ?? LOL Anyway.....I had a few other things I wanted, some night-light bulbs, rubbing alcohol, maybe some kleenex and some cheap scissors.
As I went down the scissor isle, I saw a woman with a cart at the other end. She looked up at me and then she talked ! What ? She asked me if I liked dark chocolate and I said I did (instead of ..who wants to know ?? LOL).... and then she asked me if I liked "this" brand and she held up these small packs of Dove. I acknowledged I liked that brand too and she grabbed a handful of bags, came over to my cart and put them in while telling me they were only a penny a bag ! What ?? So I thanked her, told her that was kind of her and she walked back to her cart and went away.
I thought that was odd, but that is the way it happened. I now had 5 small bags of chocolate. I went ahead and gathered the other things I went for, checked out and left. I couldn't help but think over it a few times as I went though. My mind was trying to figure out why she did that, but I did notice there was more in her cart. I watched when they rung up and sure enough, I was only charged a penny for each bag. I did wonder if she felt bad about taking all the bags that were on the shelf or if she decided she would eat them all if she got home with them. I realize what we wonder about what other people think is probably frequently not even close.
Later after I got home I opened one of the bags and found that it had 8 squares of chocolate in it. Small bag, but for real, you wouldn't expect to get one piece for a penny anywhere.
After lunch I decided to bring a piece of it back here to my desk to eat while I checked to see what all had happened in my networld while I was gone. When I opened the foil I found this, the chocolate didn't look quite right.
Turns out, at some time or the other, these bags of chocolate have gotten too hot, did a slight melt and then cooled down again, causing the chocolate on the outside to seize. It doesn't change the flavor or make the chocolate harmful, but it is a damaged product. I assure you THAT wasn't on the sign. 😀 I think it might be a tad harder than fresh. I did check the date and it does not go out of the original date till February of 2023. Oh well ! Now we know.
When I was on the way back home, I wanted to buy some lunch. I thought about a place or two, but then remember I still had leftover gift cards from the local biscuit shop from Christmas, so that is how what I ate for lunch was decided.
I chose a fried porkchop biscuit and a hash brown. I normally eat the hash brown on the way back home, but of all things, by the time I got out of the place into heavy traffic and made a couple of turns, I totally forgot about my traveling-back-home-hash brown treat. You KNOW you are getting old when you forget something like that... LOL... I got home, took in my bags from the car, put things away and finally sat down to eat and that is when I remembered the hash brown. Now it was still slightly warm and it still tasted decent, but it is always best to eat them while they are piping hot. Phooey ! ....but.... oh well.... right?
Now to the subject of magazines. Since I am older, much of my life magazines were physical paper book'ish things. Through my life, I have read many magazines. I rarely bought a subscription, although once in a while I did and eventually over the last some years, their price went up from a couple of dollars to $10 or now more per copy at the book store and grocery store and of course, they are not a great value for entertainment at that price. Most of them have SO many advertisements in them, it seems you only get about a third of the pages for articles, recipes and other good stuff. Normally, I can devour all the good out of one in about 30 minutes (sometimes less) so in general I rare justify buying them. I will buy a copy to go into a gift for my Mom or Sisters once in a while as a bonus and sometimes we share some we have already read.
Years back when I lived in Texas for 6 years, I flew home every Christmas and twice more for weddings. I earned a lot of skymiles with Delta, but never enough to get me a free ticket. After I moved back home, I found that I could get magazine subscriptions with them, so every year or two, I would go look and if they offered anything that might be vaguely interesting, I would order. Sometimes they didn't have anything good at all, so I'd skip and try again later.
At the end of 2021, I went in and got 3 subscriptions, the two you see below and a third one called Living... by Martha Stewart. In April they stopped publishing Living because the new owners wanted to focus on digital. (Booooooo !) so I got a notice that I would not get anymore magazines, but I could go to the website and blah blah blah....... Good thing I didn't actually spend new money on it.
About a month ago I got an email that said the Eating Well was no longer going to publish and I could choose a replacement with a code. I took the code the magazine site and of course they have nothing decent there, barely any options and mostly all business magazines. Business magazines do not entertain me.
So today, you guessed it, in the mail was a card that says now the third magazine that I am in the middle of a subscription for will be coming to me digitally instead. Yuck !
A magazine may be a dinosaur thing and I'm guessing from what I'm seeing that real ones are about to go extinct. Although you can say that a digital copy has all the same content and that may be true, the experience is not the same and to people that know the difference, not as good. I'm semi sad to see them go, but I will not be subscribing to any online magazines, so that era is over ! As far as I am concerned, I only got half of what my skymiles paid for.
I saw this in Real Simple (it has it's info at the bottom of the photo 🙂) I thought it looked like a neat way to cut up watermelon to serve. I know you can eat watermelon just fine without it being cut like this, but I thought it looked nice for serving. (It's probably on Pinterest 673 times LOL but I never saw it before)
I also saw this in the Real Simple magazine. I was not so impressed about the egg being served with pita and hummus, but I was intrigued with the boiled eggs being cut in half and then toasted on the open side. That is certainly something I had never thought about doing. I would try it, but probably with nice butter instead of olive oil.
Everything changes !..... I know it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it all!
I'm not sure what I am going to do next on this Vaca Wednesday evening, but I'm sure I'll use all my time up none-the-less.
