— छह हज़ार उन्नीस —
It turned out to be fairly convenient that I did not bike to work yesterday—the only day this week I did not commute by bike (though I'll also need to remember not to tomorrow, since I'll be catching Light Rail directly to Ravenna after work)—because it allowed Shobhit to pick me up at 4:30. We went straight down to the Walgreens on Jackson Street off 23rd, which is closing May 19. We went to look for items on clearance pricing. Maybe half the stuff was on sale; some of the shelves were already empty.
It can be hard to strike the best balance with store-closing sales. You want to wait long enough for the discounts to be deepest, but not so long that all the stuff you'd actually want to buy is sold out. We'll probably go back again at least once more, sometime after my Birth Week. We did buy some gift wrap that was 50% off, and even though it's not super Christmasy it's still quite nice and should cover all the calendars I make for Christmas. More importantly, we went looking for birthday candles, as I am insisting on having 50 candles on one of my birthday cakes—Shobhit's going to make a red velvet cake, and Dad and Sherri will get a sheet cake from Costco. Anyway, I bought three 20-count boxes of candles for $1.49 each. They're all pretty plain, just white in color, but that's fine. All that I care about is that I have 50 candles on my cake!
Dad had said some people may not want to eat cake I have blown all over in a post-covid era. This was why I suggested we have two cakes. I can put the candles on just one of them, and let people choose whether they want to eat any of it. But I want my 50 candles, goddammit!
Anyway, we went from there to the Central District PCC. There's a Member Only Offer for a free 8oz bottle of private label juice, plus my gift bag from Ayn and the others from Presence yesterday included several coupons for a free item of several different brands. I must have gotten eight or so free products out of it. Oh, and I also had a paper coupon for $5 off $25, so we had to spend at least that much (technially $29.41 when accounting for my 15% employee discount) in order to use it. I got a few 6-packs of Zevia Soda. They're still selling four flavors of it, three of which I still buy regularly.
A couple of the coupons wouldn't scan at the register, which meant we held up the line. Oh well. In the end we got a bunch of stuff and I only spent a little over twenty bucks. Okay, I spent $23. I think the value of what I bought was probably somewhere between double and triple that.
We came home and I had my leftover pizza for dinner. We finished season 2 of
Patriot and it was excellent, in spite of what a downbeat note it ended on.
— छह हज़ार उन्नीस —
— छह हज़ार उन्नीस —
Okay I have to talk about Madonna now. I've known for months she was working on an album set to come out this year called
Confessions II, a sequel album to her 2005
Confessions on a Dance Floor—which, incidentally, is the last bona fide smash hit album she ever released; it sold a million copies in the U.S., a far cry from her career-peak, but it sold 10 million worldwide. (Her next album, 2008's
Hard Candy, sold half a million in the U.S. and 4 million worldwide, which would qualify it as a "hit" but hardly a smash. Her worldwide sales of every album since has been half that of the previous album.)
It seems pretty clear that Madonna is attempting to recapture the magic of the last time she has a smash hit, and I don't really think it's going to work. Age will certainly play into it: she was 47 when
Confessions on a Dance Floor came out; she's 67 now. She's had far more work done, and her attempts to still seem "cool" have been pathetic for ages.
And yet? I only learned just yesterday, thanks to a podcast, that the first song from the new album had been released! Apparently it's been available since April 18 but it took me four days to know about it—this is almost certainly due to my turning away from all Meta platforms for once; I haven't posted since April 8. I removed their pinned tabs from all of my browsers, and a few days ago I even deleted the Facebook Messenger app from my phone. I check for certain things periodically on Facebook, so I think I'll prefer to let my profile languish rather than actually deleting the page, but even going this far has been pretty liberating. The only social media I really look at or post on now is Bluesky. The downside is that I can be a bit behind when Madonna releases music.
I was thrilled to discover when I looked it up yesterday on Apple Music that the full album is set to release on July 3. I really thought the concert Shobhit and Danielle and I went to in 2024 might be the finaly Madonna tour I see, but now I bet anything she'll tour to support this album. I'll definitely go again.
Anyway, the song is called "I Feel So Free," and it's the opening track to the album. It doesn't hit the way "Hung up" did, not even close, and I'm a little ambivalent about all the talk-delivery of the lyrics, but I do love the beat and I keep listening to it on repeat.
— छह हज़ार उन्नीस —
I joined the weekly Fresh Team meeting today for a bit at the beginning, to talk about price rounding rules we're looking to institude across all departments. Tracy, the Senior Director of Merchandising for the Fresh Categories, has been making a weirdly big deal out of my being a "guest" at this meeting. He even asked me yesterday if there were any Deli items I'd like to have at the meeting. I immediately mentioned my beloved Smoked Mozzarella Pasta Salad, which he of course immediately responded to with, "But you hate that now!" No, it just used to be
better when the smoked mozzarella was
cubed! It's still delicious though. That said, he had a good point when he said it might not be the best snack choice for when I would be doing a lot of talking.
So in the end I settled for their Salted Chocolate Chip Nut and Honey Clusters, which are super tasty. And just because I had requested it, when I went to the meeting there was a big bowl of them. To the point about how much I would be talking, though, the meeting started with me, and I did a fair amount of talking. Tristan had also brought pull-apart bread, and when I was done and good to leave, less than 15 minutes into the meeting, I simply used to the tongs to grab three of the clusers and was on my way.
When I got back to my desk, I went to pull my phone out of my pocket and was a little weirded out by how heavy it seemed to be—until I realized I had
two phones in there. Oops! I went back and interrupted the meeting again to say, "I stole somebody's phone. I don't know whose this is." I set it down on the table next to Tristan and conveniently, it was hers. Tracy laughed out loud as I left again.
And then? I didn't close the fucking door all the way! When I went back to catch it as it swung open again and Diana was already pushing it shut again. I apologized and went back to my desk yet again. Christ, how awkward can I possibly make this today?
— छह हज़ार उन्नीस —
[posted 12:32pm]
