Saturday Cleaning

Greetings. Saturday has typically been the day that we (or most people anyway) clean our houses or places of living. So, here's a "clean up" of things that have happened from the past week, or thoughts I've missed in recent weeks.

Frequent shopper's cards. Many stores these days have the frequent shopper's cards, where they say it saves you money on things you buy every day. At some stores, you really do save money on things you buy often, however others you don't. I've got about 5 different cards like these on my keychain. Funny thing though, only about 2 or 3 of them are actually for stores in the Austin area. Well, yesterday I went to the neighborhood CVS Pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions. When I finally made it up to the pharmacy area, I had a few other items and was ready to pay for those along with the medications. The clerk asked if I had a CVS card, and I promptly pulled out my keychain, held it out to her with the cards spread out in a fan-fold fashion, and said, "Pick a card." She took the card, scanned it, and gave it back to me. She then gave me the updated total for money I owed her. Strangely, the second total I got was exactly the same, minus a few pennies, as the first total, before she scanned my card. As I was leaving with a friend, we chuckled about how these frequent shopper's cards don't seem to really save you any money anymore.

Overly helpful people. In recounting the story of paying my own taxes, I forgot to mention someone that tried to be helful to me. When I was walking up to the H&R Block place along the strip shopping center, a woman came running over to me. She was so intent on helping me that she tripped over my cane and took a spill on the sidewalk. I worried for a moment that my cane would break, since it got caught between her legs, but I then turned my attention to the woman on the ground. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: "Are you all right?"
Her: "Oooh, ah, ooh. Ouch, I'm not sure. My side hurts."
Me again: "Are you ok?"
Her: "No, well, ... I was coming over to help you. Are you ok?"
Me, standing and grinning at her: "Yes, I'm fine. Are you ok?"
Her: "Oooh, I'll be ok, ... I think."

I walked away, waited a few minutes to put distance between us, and then burst out laughing.

Throwing darts. There's a dart board in the cubicle area at work. This has been the subject of stress releaving activity, as well as down right fun. I know that blind people throw darts, I've done it before myself, but never with other blind people. So far, in my experience with this particular dart board, no one has gotten hit by flying darts, but I suppose its possible. The funniest thing is when one or two totally blind guy sstand off to the side, and critique a certain person's dart throwing skills and where the dart landed, just by the sound. One day, I thought my sides would split from laughing so hard. Well, the dart board has taken on new menaing, since while I was in training this past week, it was put to a new use: argument decider. I learned later that a couple of instructors got into an argument about who was going to teach a particular class, and they ultimately threw darts to decide the winner. The person who first hit the board would get the choice of classes. The day after this worthy competition happened, I talked with the winner about it, asking him how many darts he had to throw to hit the board, and he answered, "Two." Another funny incident with the dart board was when another instructor climbed up on top of the table behind the board, peeked over the top, and called out to the person throwing, "I'm over here. I'm above the board; now I'm below the board; now I'm above the board." I never thought that I would come across blind people with darts after I left college. There were a couple of guys down the hall from me in the dorm who had a board and darts. They weren't blind, but that didn't stop us from having hours of fun. In conclusion, I suppose darts can be used for: fun, stress releaving, and deciding arguments. Hmm, if I get good enough, I might put my dart throwing abilities on my resume, ..., or maybe not, :)

The Rapture. For those interested in the Left Behind series, you can listen to an interview with Jerry Jenkins about the upcoming book, "The Rapture." The book will be released on 06/06/06, and is the third in the pre-quel miniseries, about life before the rapture. This book focuses on the time leading up to, and the moment of, the rapture itself. It features many of the characters from the main series of 12 Left Behind books. If you want another sneak peek, you can read the first chapter or read more about the other books in the series at the Left Behind website.

That's about all for now. I'll write in a separate post about my training this past week and some observations and realizations. Until then.