Ghost In The Machine
10/4/1

For fifteen days a year, starting on the 3rd of October and ending on the 18th, Gwen Stefani and I are the same age.

My life is pretty easy. It was harder earlier, so now the easiness sets in. Sometimes I get discouraged that my life doesn�t have a huge amount of challenges, but sometimes, like yesterday on my way home when I was finally putting all the pieces together about what I needed to take care of, I laughed out loud in the car.

Also on the way home yesterday, I stopped off by the newly redesigned Food World to get some sodas. I�ve been out of diet drinks, one of my few true luxuries as I drink maybe four cans a day, for two whole days.

I go to what was the soda isle, but it�s paper products. They�d moved the sodas since the last time I was in, which was before the redesign, which I frankly, looking back, am not sure what they redesigned. The drinks were two aisles down.

I grabbed some Diet Mountain Dew and was looking for what else they had. Ooh, only $1.99 for a 12 pack of Diet Dr. Pepper, but you had to have a value �we can track you� card. I had tried to get one when they had first reopened.

See, I have a Kroger Value Card, but I�m not in their database. I was checking out and if I didn�t have a card, which I didn�t, it would have cost me about four dollars more. The gal handed me a set of cards and an application and stuck the corresponding sticker to the application and told me to turn it in when I had filled it out.

The day that I filled it out has not come, and it has been over two years. The cards work fine.

I took my two 12 packs up to the customer service/tobacco area of Food World and started filling out an application. I checked it, and since it didn�t say that I needed to provide accurate info, and oh, I know it was wrong, but I put 1968 Middendorf Ct as my street.

This will not mean much later.

Mr. Dude came over while I was filling it out and put a sticker with a bar code on the application and handed me a set of cards. I finished filling out the application and asked him where I needed to put it. He said just to leave it here on the customer service/tobacco counter.

I went and bought my drinks. The cards worked without him entering the info. I commented this to the check out gal. She said, �How do you know he hasn�t entered it in?�

�Because the paper is still sitting there. I can see it.� I said. �Considering how much I hate giving out my information, I�m tempted to go grab it and throw it in the garbage on my way out.�

The gal smiled.

On my way out, I walked by the customer service/tobacco desk and grabbed my application. Mr. Dude saw me do it, but didn�t really care or it didn�t register what I was doing. I walked out.

The application is in the back of my car right now.

You have to celebrate the minor victories over the system.

[Middendorf was the restaurant that I had fried softshell crab at in Manchac, Louisiana.]