the passionate ailurophile

Yeah, we’re going to do it tonight.  We don’t want to be out at all tomorrow night if possible, as the liquor stores will no doubt be crazy.

I have an $8.00 Stripes coupon for TGI Friday’s that expires tomorrow.  So we’re going to use it tonight.  On the way to Friday’s, we’ll stop at Kappy’s to pick up the annual bottles of Le Cheapeau Champagne.  I also need regular white wine for the duck recipe I want to make, and I’m hoping that perhaps I can find some Allagash beer there, as well.  They didn’t have any at the other Kappy’s last week when I was looking for it.  Kappy’s used to be better than it is now, they used to have more craft brews.  But now they seem to be catering more to the lowest common denominator, the people around here, who mostly drink swill beer like Budweiser.

I know…it’s funny how I talk about buying $6 bottles of sparkling wine for New Year’s, but I’m so picky about beer.  I guess I just like the symbolism of champagne, but I’m not a connoisseur of the stuph.  I buy champagne exactly once a year.  But we serve beer instead of wine with a lot of meals, especially holiday meals, and I try to find decent beers to pair with the food.  And we go to beer festivals, brewpubs, and stuph a lot, and even at ballparks, we seek out the craft-brewed beers.  They are more expensive, but definitely worth it!

The fact that it’s hard to find decent beer in my town makes it all the more surprising that the TGI Friday’s we go to, in the next town over, carries Shipyard seasonals on tap.  This town is not much different from the one we live in, the people are mostly the Joe Six-Pack types who mostly drink Bud or Miller.  But I guess there must be some people besides us who order the craft beers there.  I’m looking forward to having some Shipyard Prelude Christmas ale there tonight, hopefully it is still there.  It was there the last time we were there, several weeks ago.

While we are at the Friday’s shopping center, we need to hit Petsmart to get cat food, Purina Healthful Life.  Our kittehs love this stuph, but we have to get it at a pet supply store…the grocery stores never have the really large bags.  The small bags they have would only last about three days around here.

With the duck, I want to serve  our traditional Hoppin’ John, along with some form of greens.  We’re planning to go to Stop & Shop, rather than the usual Shaw’s, because it’s on the way home from Friday’s, and it stays open until midnight.  I’m not a fan of S&S, at least not this location, but there tend to be fewer idiots there later in the evening.  And they have gotten a better selection of stuph since they remodeled the place…the last time I was in there, I saw that they had plenty of ducks.  Of course, that was because I wasn’t looking to buy one at the time.  With my kind of luck, tonight, when I am actually looking for a duck, no one will have any.  But we shall see.

They probably still have the usual collection of idiot cashiers, though.  I hope we luck out and don’t get one.  With this economy, I am surprised that these dummies are allowed to work anywhere, when there are plenty of capable people who’d be happy to take those jobs.  Working any retail job sucks, I’ll give you that.  I’ve heard from more than one source that S&S is a really crappy place to work for, but I’m not sure if they mean that one store, or the entire company.  I mean, would it suck just as bad to work at one of the IT Jobs in the corporate offices?

I guess there must be people out there who’d rather live in a cardboard box under a bridge, than to cashier at that store.  So they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for help.  Most of them are entitlement minded teenagers who think they should get paid for doing nothing.  But if we go past 9PM, it’s less likely that any of them will be working, due to child labor laws and all.

Well, let’s just hope that they have everything I need, is as idiot-free as possible, and we just get in and out!