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In case there are people out there who need help optimizing their trips to the grocery store, I have a few tips. Although, chances are good that if you’re reading this then you’re old enough to have been to the grocery store enough to have your own system.

• Park near a cart corral.
  This is in order to facilitate your exit. If you park near a cart corral, you won’t have to go very far to return your cart after loading the groceries into your vehicle. This is especially helpful if you have small children to buckle in car seats. If you have an ineffective conscience and can leave shopping carts scattered around the parking lot to annoy other customers, then this tip is even more important because you need the help to take care of your cart.
• Start at the deli counter.
  Unless, of course, you don’t have any deli items on your list. But if you do, go to the deli first. Grab a ticket and see how close they are to your number. If it’s close, stick around and get your stuff soon. If it’s not close, start your shopping and check back in from time to time so you don’t miss your turn. Last time, I was able to get all my other shopping done (not a big list) in the time it took for them to get through the other deli customers.

  You may be tempted to look at the deli line and tell yourself you’ll come back at the end of your shopping trip if the line’s short, so that the cold cuts can stay cold. But if you do that, the line will have grown significantly when you return, and then you’ll have to wait around uselessly. Either get your deli items or take a number at the beginning of the shopping trip.

• Load big or heavy items on the conveyor belt first.
  This is not what most people do, because they usually have the smaller, lighter items on top of the bigger, heavier items in the cart. And people naturally grab what’s first and work their way down when at the cashier. But this then causes problems when taking the bags from the bagger and putting them back in the cart. You end up putting the lighter, more fragile items in the cart first and then have to try to fit big things in later.

  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So you won’t have to worry about anything when putting bags in the cart if you just grab the big items first. I grab big items (except for things under the cart), then I do smaller heavy items like cans and jars, then I do all the frozen items, then the refrigerated items, then the soft or fragile items. That way, the loaf of bread doesn’t end up squished by the bag of apples.

Any other tips?

Give this guy a wide berth if you happen to be driving near him.

Settlers of Catan is a fun game. It can get involved though, which is another way of saying lengthy. And when you’re playing with a 6-year-old, it can be too long.

So, between me and Gamma, we came up with a few ways to make the game go faster. If you’re not familiar with SoC, then this won’t mean anything to you.

House Rules for Settlers of Catan

• At the beginning, draw cards for each of your initial settlements, not just the last one. So you start with 6 cards.
• The minimum distance to build is 1 road segment, not 2. So you can build close together.
• You can build a city by itself – it does not need to replace a settlement.
• Rolling a 7 has no effect until the first city has been built. Just pretend it didn’t happen and re-roll.

It does reduce some of the strategy involved, but there had to be some tradeoff.

Delta : Dad!
Me : Delta!
Delta : Dad!
Me : Delta!
Delta : Dad!
Me : Delta!
Delta : Dad!
Me : Delta!
Gamma : Dad, you’re supposed to say “what”
Delta : Dad!
Me : What?
Delta : I’m hungry.

The scene: Delta is crying.
Delta : What’s the last song on the CD?
Me : Good King Wenceslas
Delta : Gamma said it was Delta is a Bad Boy.
Me : Nope, that’s not even a real song.

The scene: Delta has just finished running up the driveway.
Delta : My head is beating.
Pause
Delta : My heart is in my head now!

Gamma : If fish don’t breathe air, why do they jump out of water? Is it like their swimming?
It took me a second to figure that one out.

Beta : Dad, Gamma hit me!
Gamma : He told me to!
Me : Did you ask him to hit you?
Beta : Yes
Me : Well, what did you expect?

The scene: We are on a long drive. Everyone is quiet and occupied, except for one child.
Gamma : Dad!
Me : Yes?
Gamma : Dad!
Me : Yes?
Gamma : Dad, what would you be like if you had no bones?
I offer some explanation.
Gamma : Dad, why do birds fly in a V?
I offer some explanation.
Gamma : Dad, how do people know what brains look like?
I offer some explanation.
Gamma : Dad, how does an air conditioner work?
I offer some explanation.
Gamma : So when it’s hot out, it gets even hotter because all the cars’ air conditioners take the cold air?
Me : I think so.
Gamma : Dad, how does salt melt snow?
I offer some explanation.
Gamma : Dad, when you cut paper, where does it go?
Me : It just separates, like you’re ripping it.
Gamma : But where does it go?
Me : ???
Gamma : Last time, you said it goes to the other side.
Me : Okay, that sounds right.
I had no idea he asked me that before. Must remember to offer only valid explanations to things.

There were many more, but those were the most interesting questions I could remember.

Me : Look, I just smacked a mosquito.
Gamma : Where?
Me : There, see the blood?
Gamma : Why did the blood come out?
Me : He was drinking my blood, and I hit him, so my blood came out of him.
Gamma : Like he was laughing when he was drinking so the blood came out his nose?
Me : No, his tummy was full of my blood and when I squished him he broke open.

We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 7

After breakfast in the hotel room, set out on another adventure. We could see the shuttle bus stop from our room window, and we waited until all the amusement park people had left. We were off to Hershey Gardens – the botanical gardens that are part of the Hershey complex and are thus included in the shuttle bus routes.

The boys really enjoyed it. The gardens had a number of different sections:

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My wife did not like our closet doors (they were large, heavy, and obtrusive), so we went to IKEA to procure an alternative method of hiding the contents of our closet.

Behold, the Kvartal:

I’m not going to go into details explaining IKEA’s closet curtain system and how it works, and I’m not going to give step-by-step instructions on how to install them. It was obvious enough from the instructions they provided.

What I am going to do is offer up my collection of Allen wrenches to the highest bidder.

For the Kvartal, you buy all the pieces individually. That lets you customize it to what you want. So we bought some rails, a few hanger thingies, and a few panels of fabric to go in the hangers. Oh, and the brackets for mounting the rails.

The downside with the modular approach is that, since they don’t know if you’re buying one piece or ten, they provide a little Allen wrench with each piece. It’s the same wrench, but I didn’t need 14 of them to install one closet system.

For those who are keeping track: yes, there are only 13 in this photo. I lost one somewhere.

Sometimes, when I am assembling something, or fixing something, there will be a pile of spare parts left. In this case, I had a pile of spare tools.

We took a week to circle Lake Erie. We never visited Lake Erie itself, just a few interesting points.

Day 5

After breakfast at the hotel, we left Perry. It was a few hours – starting on some backs roads because Perry (or Castile, I couldn’t figure out which was where) is not near anything. The plan was get up, eat breakfast, and leave, Then, 4 hours later, we would arrive in Harrisburg and eat lunch and then pop over to Hershey since it is right next to Harrisburg.

Due to the lack of breakfast options, it seems that everyone ate lighter than usual, because people were hungry about halfway to Harrisburg. Or maybe it took us longer to pack up so we didn’t leave right after breakfast. I forget which.

Anyway, thanks to the magic or smartphones, my wife was able to find a restaurant that we could get to before the kids melted down. There were a variety of chains, but we chose a place we had never heard of before – Country Cupboard.

It’s in Lewisburg, and it is well worth a stop. It has a large restaurant, but it also has a candy store and gift shop and stuff. You may be picturing a Cracker Barrel. That would be inadequate. This place is more like a complex, filling an area comparable to a few Cracker barrels put together.

The kids liked it. A lot. In fact, Beta still asks if we can go to Pennsylvania, just so he can eat at the Country Cupboard again. The food was good. And it was a buffet, so the kids could get what they liked and in what portions. There was a lot of variety, and it was a decent price. Nothing bad to say.

We eventually made it to Hershey and went to the Hershey Lodge.

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