Cheryl Beckham

There’s a grocery store in Europe that makes our little ’self-checkout’ lines look obsolete already.  In Germany, there’s a grocery store that you take your cell phone, scan the items with it that you put in your shopping cart and then when you get to the check out, your cell phone will display a bar code for everything you scanned total, the check out person scans that and you pay and out you go.

So it looks like we’re not only looking at advances in grocery shopping but also in cell phones.  At the check out, once you scan the payment bar code, you can pay by cash, credit card, debit card or fingerprint (after you have signed up for fingerprint shopping).  And the politicians wonder why we are falling behind the rest of the world where technology is concerned.

Well this morning I had gone to the little gas station down the street from my house, where I purchased a drink called Monster thinking it was just to boost you up a little bit for the day ahead. Unfortunately about 5 hours after drinking it, I had experienced jittery bursts out of no where, and I couldn’t stop thinking about everything at the quick speed it was going.

I got so ahead of myself that I ended up spilling hot coffee all over my white blouse that I had on, what a mess! Now I’m worn out and I feel like I ran 8 miles with no break, about to pass out. Be aware of these drinks they cant be too healthy for you.

I do the majority of my grocery shopping at our local Food Lion, they seem to have the cheapest prices for the items that I buy regularly. There is a few things that I can’t seem to get Food Lion to carry for me, so once in a while I will need to make a side trip to either Martins (owned by Giant and very expensive) or go to Wal-Mart, ugh, I’m not a big Wal-Mart fan and dread having to go there.

I have seen for the past month or so that Food Lion has a huge bin over flowing with brand new books at a discounted price and as much as I love to read, it takes a huge discount for me to purchase any book. I get most of my reading material from places that give them away or go to the used book store to find my bargains. The price of a brand new book is totally outrageous, I can’t even remember the last time I bought a book at full retail price.

But back to Food Lion’s book offering, today I had to make a mid week grocery run and I noticed that the book bin was almost empty, and they had a sign stating that the remaining books were being sold for 75% off of the already discounted price. With that being said, I stopped and took a look to see what was left over and was glad to find two new hard covered books that needed to come home with me and only paid $1.50 for each one, and I’m pleased with my purchase and will go back again on Friday and take another look see.

I’m so sick of drinking soda and iced tea, so I picked up a few packets of one of my favorite drinks as a kid, Black Cherry Kool Aid and I’m thrilled to have something different to drink on these hot summer days. Kool Aid, Kool Aid, Tastes Great, Wish We Had Some, Can’t Wait!

A neat trick that I learned as a kid is to fill an ice cube tray with the Kool Aid flavor that you have just made and use them instead of the plain water that we are accustomed to using. That way the Kool Aid doesn’t get watered down. This is important for me because I like my Kool Aid strong, so strong that I actually use 1 1/2 packets to make my 1/2 gallon jug of Cherry flavored Kool Aid, I can’t stand a weak glass of any iced drink.

I can’t believe that the owner of the restaurant and bar that I tend the bar at has, at the last minute decided to have their doors open and welcoming for the day of Thanksgiving. After finding that most of his employees don’t have immediate family members to celebrate the holiday with, he made his decision based on employee availability. He has been asked numerous times by the “regulars” if he would consider this possibility and he grabbed the bait and definitely ran with it. Just wish he had not waited until the last minute.

So the bad news is that I have to tend bar that day. A bar and restaurant filled with all of the other “loners” in the county will certainly be an interesting shift, they better not be stingy with their wallets, due to their loneliness and depression that is known to hit people harder during the family oriented holiday season.

The good news is that we are promised to be paid overtime for the inconvenience and all of our efforts in making this as pleasant as we possibly can.