is it just me?

those two items aren't related. I don't think.

Last week I received via email this month's copy of Badger Beat, which is a newsletter from the police. I am not sure how I feel about the police spending their time writing a newsletter, but whatever. What caught my eye (and you know I read these things just in case there is something worth of mocking) was the front page feature "Crime of the Month". This strikes me as an odd award. I think usually it is crime that has not yet been solved on campus. In this case it was someone who had stolen about $5000 worth of computer equipment. How would you feel if your crime was 'crime of the month'? Proud? Worried? Inspired to achieve even greater crime heights? Your happiness might be tempered by the fact that along with a description of your crime they have a surveillance video picture of you. But truthfully I don't think I could ever make an i.d. from the grainy, odd angle shot of some random person. I mean, they do it on Law and Order all the time, but still. And have you noticed that on CSI they can blow a picture up to about a million times it's normal size with zero pixilation and perfect resolution? Do they think we don't know that's not really how it works? And did you know that the computer matching of fingerprints is completely fake? Apparently there is no such machine and almost all matching has to be done by hand. That would make for a very boring hour of television so they should probably keep it the way it is.

Yesterday I went grocery shopping. I hate grocery shopping. There is one store here that is cheaper than most of the others. However, it is always more crowded with stupid people. At the grocery store near my house there are some university students who are annoying to shop with, but at least you can get a laugh out of what they put in their cart. But for the most part it is people like me, who don't bring their ten kids and don't scream at their boyfriends down the aisle and generally are just nice quiet people who need food. Not so with the cheap place. But often after I spend a lot of money at the nice grocery I say "next time I will go to the cheap place". So yesterday I did. It was awful. Kids. Screaming. And just stupidity. I think there are few places where people go as autistic as grocery stores and airports. Somehow we manage to drive our cars around all the time and not hit people. But give those drivers a grocery cart and let the demolition derby begin. I mean, why would you look where you were going? You're trying to find cereal! Why not leave your cart smack in the middle of the aisle. I mean, no one else needs access to the shelves. You need soup! And it takes three of you to find it. The other thing about this grocery store (home of the jerky section which I believe I mentioned in an earlier post) is the randomness of the items listed for the aisles. Usually they use broad categories, right? Like "Cereal" or "Soft Drinks". This place actually says "Pop Tarts". And you know what? They have a LOT of pop tarts there. There is an ethnic foods aisle, which is common (and a slight improvement on the store closer to my house which still boasts an Oriental Foods section which is really just rice and soy sauce) but they also have and Ethnic Beverages aisle. (It's mostly mexican soft drinks, but there's some other interesting stuff there including Inka Kola which is rarely seen outside Peru.) Anyway, I am not really sure who decides on these things. I suspect they have a sense of humor. And just to prove to you that I was not lying about the proliferation of cool whip in "salads" in Wisconsin, the Cool Whip section at the grocery store requires a refrigerated section with five access doors. Five. That's a lot of cool whip.

On Friday we went to two birthday parties. At the first party the birthday boy's wife had a bunch of people over to their house, there were a ton of kids there and she cooked a boatload of delicious Mexican food. It was fun, though conversations focused on home improvement, what a good burper someone's new baby is, how much fun someone had volunteering at recess for her kid's kindergarten class, and dogs. Everyone had a beer or two, not much more, and people went home around 9. This is what happens if it is your birthday and you have three kids. Our other friends went out to a pizza place, ate tons of mediocre food, drank martinis, and when they were done there went over to a wine bar for more wine and martinis. Talk centered around volleyball, so and so's new boyfriend, and some discussion of the Yankees game which was playing in the background. I will allow you to choose your own adventure. If you prefer party A, you need to get married and procreate in the suburbs soon. If you prefer B surround yourself with actively dating/newly married people without kids. I am not sure which is better, truthfully.

I hate the Yankees and I hope they lose tonight.
the end.