Thursday November 20th 2025

This has been a lazy week. Other than a few short drives to a store or two, I stayed home at my base camp all week. I blame the rediscovery of my ebook supply for this behavior. Unlike TV shows which are short and usually contain commercials, reading a book becomes very immersive for me. Once I start reading, I keep reading. Meal times get changed, sleep time change and motivation to do other things is lost. All this for books I’ve read before. This week has been old Tom Clancy and W.E.B Griffin books.

Today I had to take my nose out of a book long enough to restock the kitchen. Earlier in the week I ran out of supplies for simple lunches, but I went without rather than going shopping. This morning I ran out of breakfast foods and was getting dangerously close to running out of coffee. It was clearly time to visit the grocery section of Walmart. Hopefully for the last time until after Thanksgiving.

Mid afternoon today the store was very busy. I assume that some of the shopping was for the holiday, but there seemed to be a lot of regular weekly shopping going on too. There were several kids having very loud meltdowns along with parents that had reached their limits. As usual for this Walmart the aisles were filled with shopping carts, blue Walmart online shopping pickers carts and far too many pallets of new stock waiting to be moved to the shelves. It is very congested.

I was in the store for more than an hour. I’m usually in and out in about a half an hour. In addition to the crowds, I took enough time to stock up with enough stuff that I don’t have to return before the end of the month. By then the Thanksgiving food shopper and the Black Friday crowds should be gone.