Drawing a Blank

Today was a super-windy day, no kidding. I actually got an e-mail from the electric company that was more or less to assure me they were ready to handle any problems caused by the wind, which is less reassuring than you might think at 6-something AM. (My basic reaction: "...okay?") At work, I kept turning my head toward the window because the noise was considerable; I think my brain was trying to alert me that there might be a helicopter landing outside the window, or something else potentially dangerous. It's been a noisy week there anyway, since our side of the building has the loading dock and a company moved out of our building this week, meaning there has been a lot of disposal-of-stuff noises (think metal shelves being thrown into a dumpster for an hour; that kind of noise). I guess the windy day was the final straw for my personal-danger-warning system. It hasn't been as loud as the jackhammer was, but then that was one morning, not a week.

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I got to cross off a thing from my to-do list recently (always a good feeling) when I finally got the batteries in my car remote replaced. The remote I was using started acting up more than a month ago, and when I pulled out the other one, it was long dead too. For a while I kept using it, with mixed success, but it got to the point where I was standing outside my car clicking and clicking and getting more and more annoyed. So this week I finally got around to going in, after a week or two of manually locking (which is a pain that is a first world problem, I know, but it's one of those things that's hard to go back to). The nice man changed the batteries, and while he was ringing it up, I stood at the register looking around, as one does.

They had cleverly put a display of 9V batteries there with a sign reminding us that, with the time change this weekend, it's a good time to change the batteries in smoke detectors. I was unfamiliar with the brand (Werker), so I looked more closely, and commented idly on a surprising-to-me fact: Made in Belgium? This clearly startled the men behind the counter, as I had failed to notice a sign next to the display stating that they were Made in the USA. Someone fetched a different size battery of the same brand from the shelves, and it was in fact made in the US, curiouser and curiouser. We discussed how we would associate Belgium with fine chocolate before batteries.

And they took the Made in the USA sign down; I opined that it would confuse customers more to have AA batteries in a change-your-smoke-detector display than it would to have Belgian-made batteries next to a Made in the USA sign. Agree?

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I got my plane tickets for Christmas, ahhh. Relaxed time with my mother aside, Monday morning to Saturday night in Florida sounds good already, and we all know it will get colder here before then.