I had the car cleaned on Sunday.
There is a Garage just up the road from me where some nice Mexicans will clean your car for you, inside and out, for $35! This is great for me, as I have no facilities to clean my car here, and even if I did, I am
hopeless at that kind of thing. I still own another car in the UK and my Dad cleans it every Sunday. My car here is worth about 10 times the cost of the car back home, and the car here gets cleaned here once a year if it's lucky. I think it does look magnificent now though. The thing about cleaning cars in this area though, is that because it's so dry here, they only last about a day before the dust starts building up on them again. So the photo above needed to be taken quickly, before it lost it's shine as usual!
Temperature was well over 30c at it's height today, which is
uncomfortable for me. I struggled to hold the car's steering wheel today, as the inside had heated
up so much when it was in the parking lot. When the weather is very hot here, sometimes the flaky electricity supply gives out, because everyone has their air con on, and we all have to melt in the heat. Happily that, as far as I know has never happened in this apartment complex. But when I was leaving the underground garage today to go to my yoga class (very Californian, I know!), the electric garage doors stuck halfway and all the lights went out. They all came back on after about 15 seconds, but looking at the disturbed clocks and computer equipment in the apartment, it seems the power went off again for quite a time over lunchtime. Thankfully, I missed all that and did not have to survive without
aircon. I did try again, to do without it today, by getting the windows open early. But I have realised that anything over about 24c and you can't get by without the
aircon - well, not
comfortably anyway. This place is an office as well as a home after all!
A trip to boring old
Safeways at
Rivermark Plaza on Sunday, I was there about 9.30am, which is VERY early for me. But, like a lot of the Bay Area there is a lot of building going on in this area, local infrastructure is getting stretched, and the parking lot at
Safeways can be a nightmare later on.
And, horror - they are re-arranging
Safeways! I'm bad enough at shopping at the best of times, I don't need re-arranging! There were lots of empty shelves and the ex-pat UK food section got moved. I had a few moments of
terror when I thought it may be gone
altogether, I thought, maybe they are not making enough money selling chocolate digestives and
typoo tea. But happily, the section had just been re-located. There was not a lot there on Sunday though, good thing I had
previously stocked up and didn't need too much. I have the Hob Nobs already - so didn't buy them!
I've been putting off going to Safeways for three weeks now. I really hate Safeways. So today, having finally completely finished the butter and being on my emergency toothpaste, I could put it off no longer. The food situation is actually even worse than it looks. Some of what little food is here is well over its use by date. I suppose I don't hate Safeways that much. But I do hate the parking lot outside Safeways. In America they seem never to paint lines or make it clear in any way in parking lots who is supposed to give way to who. As Safeway is always very crowded on a Saturday, the parking lot is always very busy and the lack of obvious logic about how it works, as far as traffic flows are concerned, just makes it all the more stressful. Worse, and this is something about America I'm still struggling to understand, why do Americans plant themselves opposite a car that's pulling out of a space, blocking all the other traffic whilst doing so, so they can have the space that the car is vacating. Why not just drive around until you see a free space, thus avoiding all the congestion that the sitting and waiting in the parking lot with no obvious traffic flow causes? When I write my list about what I like and don't like about America, the American attitude to cars will, I'm sure, come pretty near my list of dislikes.
Americans are also notoriously litigious, so the above sign is obviously Safeways being mega careful. I didn't even hear any noise of construction. Also, where are you supposed to get the ear plugs from? As most people that go to Safeways seem to wander round with cellphones permanently stuck to their ears, how are they supposed to do that with ear plugs in? I'm sure they'd find a way.
Seen in the "Foreign foods" section today, which is where I can buy decent tea. I wondered if Safeways decided they had to stick the label with "dressing" onto the bottle in case Americans think Salad Creme is for external use only, like hand creme. Maybe it should be. Do any Americans really buy salad creme?
The shopping cart (as they say in America, and now probably all over the world thanks to to popularisation of the term by Amazon.com, etc) was very full today. I needed two trips back from the car to get the stuff up to the apartment. You will see that I managed to find some HP Sauce in the foreign foods section today.
To me it always seems a peculiar form of torture to put these terrible magazines next to the checkouts. My eyes always end up drawn to them, even though I can't stand them, in the same way that my eyes are always drawn to the American sports on the big tellys in the bars here, even though I have no clue about American sports. People even ask me the scores sometimes, I have no idea. If I was a pessimist, which I'm not, these magazines would convince me there is little hope for society. I just can't imagine why anyone would want to read about some "celebrity's" cellulite. I believe, although I don't have one, there is much more of this kind of thing on American telly. I suppose I was never much good at popular culture.
