Hi Hi Bi!

Marvin Gardens and I drove to Albemarle yesterday, to go to Harris Teeter. In case you didn't understand a single word of that sentence, Harris Teeter is a fancy grocery store, kind of the Whole Foods of the South, if you will. Although nothing can match the hippie pretentiousness and overpricedness of my beloved Whole Foods. Once I heard a woman there say, "This is the worst olive bar I've ever been to."

Like she goes olive bar hopping or something.

So, Albemarle is like 15 miles away, but really, what else did we have to do, and I seriously could not go back to our local "We sell only iceberg lettuce" grocery store. Iceberg lettuce. 1971 called. It wants its salad back. Got any French dressing to go with that?

Albemarle is where Kellie Pickler is from. (For my mother: she was on American Idol. I know you are too cool to watch anything but Face the Nation or whatever boring cerebral show you watch.) They had all kinds of bumper stickers and license plate holders celebrating Kellie Pickler, all of which I wanted to buy right up, but did not, because I stick to my stupid plans.

And there was no reason that Kellie Pickler should not have known what salmon was. They had some right there at the Harris Teeter. Maybe her family went to Food Lion all the time. Got them some iceberg lettuce.

At any rate, if you read this blog regularly -- and if so, why? How bored are you at work? -- you know that I have really bad eyes and that now I am losing my closeup vision. I had considered LASIK, but it is not really a medical NECESSITY, per se, although I am a proofreader, so being able to see is kind of important.

Anyway, yesterday I finally had my contacts in and I was therefore able to check out...bifocals at the Harris Teeter there. They even had a little eye test where you looked into this thing (do you like my skillful writing? "this thing." Do you feel like you were right there with me?) and you saw a page from a phone book, then you twisted a dial until you could see the letters.

Happily, I am prescription strength 1.0 for now. Which is the weakest. You'll be pleased to hear that I selected blue cat eyes, with rhinestones on the ends. No, really. This will delight my friend Blanche.

Blanche and I worked together in Seattle, and on my last day there we had a goodbye lunch. Right next to us were these old ladies and we said, "Look! There's us in 40 years!" One old lady had on a tasteful beige pantsuit and nice hair. That, um, would be Blanche. The other old lady -- me -- had on what I'm SURE she thought was a cutting-edge sparkly sweatsuit and some HOT blue sparkly glasses.

I am living up to my end of our future, Blanche. Got any beige, over there?

So, June marches on, into the world of middle-agedom. Soon I will get a prescription for Prilosec and jeans with an elastic waistband. I guess those will have to wait until January 1...