My civic duty

I just realized that I haven't gotten a jury summons during August, which means I'm not going to have jury duty for the third September in a row, to say nothing of the third September 11th in a row. Oh, well, there goes my one shot at the Guinness Book of World Records.

Bawk bawk bawk

For one very strange minute today, the apostrophe in "chickens' feet" suddenly looked misplaced to me, and I convinced myself that the plural of "chicken" was itself "chicken" (because "children," "women," and "men" are all plurals, and because there are other animal names that are their own plurals, like "fish" and "moose").

But I looked up "chicken" in the dictionary, the dictionary said it didn't have an irregular plural, and so now I'm pretty sure the plural of "chicken" is "chickens."

Can't get it out of my head

About 15 years ago, in a cafeteria at Duke University, I overheard a boy saying this to a girl, very emphatically (but he wasn't actually yelling):

"This is not a danish. This is a cinnamon roll."

Pack rat

Ever wonder what 452 TV Guides look like?

The North Hollywood cable outage of 2003

I got home from work today and flipped on the TV to watch the news about the big blackout in the Northeast.

After 10 minutes, my cable TV went out.

What is it with impulses that travel through wires today?

Alive and kicking

Gee, it's a good thing I made a slow turn into the driveway of my apartment complex just now, which allowed me to avoid hitting the three people who were standing in the driveway talking. Admittedly, there's not a lot of traffic in and out at 2:05 A.M., but still...

I can no longer shop happily

The closest supermarket to me used to be a Vons. I didn't do my regular shopping there because it was on the smallish side and kind of depressing and dark inside. On the other hand (and these were both contrasts with the Ralphs where I usually go), the checkout lines were nice and short and it was easy to get in and out of the parking lot...easier, in fact, than the 7-Eleven that's within shouting distance of my apartment complex. Therefore, I'd usually go to that Vons if I needed something on my way home from work.

That's just what I was doing on Friday, three weeks after I'd been there last...but it was gone. It actually looked like it had been closed longer than three weeks; all traces of its existence had been wiped from the building, there was a giant "for lease" sign in front of the strip mall, I could see weeds starting to grow in the parking lot, and so on.

I guess the fact that the checkout lines were always short was a bad sign.

What's now the closest Vons to me is the Vons where I used to shop when I lived three miles away from where I'm living now, and there are two Ralphs (Ralphses?) between here and there.