Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

It has been more than a month since we did a major grocery shopping run to WinCo Foods in Reno, so we made a trip to town this morning, leaving just before 1 AM and getting home just before 4 AM. This was our first shopping trip since we got the Astro back, and we're both much happier doing so. Not only does it cost half as much (the Astro gets twice the mileage of the Rolling Stone), but it's easier to pack the minivan compared to the RV.

As usual, we made two trips in and out of the store: the first one was for heavy/bulky things like bottled water, soda, and juice. Then we return for everything else. Total damage was just short of $400, but again, that's a month's worth of stuff, not counting perishables like milk and meat we get locally in Fernley.

It took about 30 minutes to unload all of these groceries once we got home. Lisa says that putting stuff away after a trip this comprehensive reminds her of the movie Das Boot with how they crammed the submarine full of supplies at the start of a mission.

This afternoon, as soon as I could get off work, Lisa and I drove into Reno for a great deal of shopping.

( Lots of Stops )

This totaled up to more than $400 in groceries, and fitting it all into the Rolling Stone was a slight challenge, but Lisa managed.

Unloading took quite a while. The larders are very full, but this means that aside from perishables like milk and eggs, we may just be able to stay home through Christmas and New Year's, which I think will suit us just fine.

We put it off for a while, but we did need to get some groceries in for Lisa before I leave for the Bay Area on Friday, so today after work, we sallied forth into an increasingly-hot Nevada afternoon and drove to Reno to get groceries of differing types, and to use some of our various discounts and rebate offers before the expired at the end of the month. At least the air conditioning on the Astro works.

We once again aimed to avoid crowding for our "big grocery" run to WinCo Foods in Reno by going in overnight.

( Yes, 24-hour grocery stores are a thing )

I got to bed as early as I could yesterday and set the alarm for midnight. We left for Reno about 1 AM. The store was more crowded than I would have liked, albeit mostly with people restocking shelves, none of whom were masked. At first, I thought that Lisa and I would end up being the only people in the store who were masked, but in the end we saw four others, not counting the person wearing a mask around the base of their chin.

Annoyingly, one of the most crowded sections was an aisle that had a whole lot of the canned goods we wanted to buy. We collected everything else we wanted, then waited until the staff finished their work so we could go get what we wanted and then check out. Ordinarily, the graveyard shift has only one checkout lane open. For whatever reason, there were so many other customers that they had three lanes open when we checked out and paid for our $230 worth of groceries. That's a lot for us, but we don't go grocery shopping as often as we did pre-pandemic, and we no longer regularly dine out in restaurants, so it evens out.

There is apparently a shortage of distilled water. The brands that used to be common on the shelves have been replaced by a different brand, and to my surprise, their gallon jugs of water are not quite the same shape/size as the previous ones, which themselves were the same shape/size as gallon jugs of milk.

From the level of traffic in the store, we tentatively have concluded that 1 AM is too early. It looks like 3 AM might have worked out better, as many of the overnight shelf-stockers appeared to be leaving around the same time we were.

We headed home (no worries about traffic at that hour), packed away the groceries, and Lisa headed for bed (she's been mostly sleeping days). I considered doing the same, but as it got close to my normal Day Jobbe starting time, decided to try and stay awake for a while longer. But I may well crash much earlier than usual today, and thanks to Day Jobbe, I already am on a different "shift" than most people expect of someone living in the Pacific time zone. (And yes, Nevada is mostly in the Pacific Time Zone. Remember that Reno is west of Los Angeles.)

Lisa spends much of the time awake at nights while I am asleep. Not this past night, however, as I woke up around 2 AM (I'd fallen into bed around 7 PM on Sunday afternoon) and couldn't get back to sleep. I checked with Lisa, and she agreed that this would be a good opportunity to go make a grocery expedition to WinCo in Reno. We dodged the people restocking the shelves, especially those not wearing proper face protection, and got a large grocery run. Lisa is stocking up on non-perishable items because I'll be gone for a week attending World Fantasy Con.

Now that rain has moved in, getting the shopping done when there was virtually no traffic and before the weather turned bad looks like an even better idea than it did at the time. But I reckon I'll be going to bed early today. Considering my travel plans in a few days, the earlier the better, because I have a very early flight out of Reno a week from Wednesday.

It's actually felt pretty autumnal since September 1, which suits me just fine. Looks like it's time to clean out the swamp cooler and repaint the bottom to prevent rust, to buy our first load of firewood, and to make an appointment to have our chimney swept.

Day Jobbe is still very intense, but we were overdue for grocery shopping. The problem with my working ten-hour days is that instead of heading for Reno about 2 PM, it's after 4 PM and we get heavier traffic. Fortunately we were mostly counter-commute. After going to WinCo Food, we could have gone straight home, but the online traffic maps showed that of both of the likely routes would have put us into a multi-mile backup, so instead we went to the Raley's O-N-E in south Reno. By the time we were done there and made our way back up to Sparks on Veteran's Parkway, the congestion had dispersed and it was a pretty quick trip home.

As much as we dislike doing our grocery shopping on weekends, and especially on the final weekend before Christmas, a variety of factors conspired to oblige us to do so today. (The worst of which was waiting all day yesterday for a UPS delivery that never came, thus wasting my every-other-Friday off.) So this morning, relatively early (between 8 and 9 AM), we headed for Reno with a long list of shops to visit.

Cost Plus World Market is offering 20% off for curbside delivery, so this morning I put in an order with them — the first time I've done such an order. I figured that by the time we made all of our other stops, they probably would have our pickup order ready.

( Running Around Reno )

Not being able to put it off any longer, we went to World Market as our final stop, but we still had not received a pickup message. I went inside and they could not find my order. Going back out to the van, and after much wrestling with the phone, I determined that somehow the order had not gone through. Nothing we had on the order was critical, and it was now after 1 PM and the stores were getting uncomfortably crowded for us, so we decided to just go home.

After we got home and unloaded all the stuff we did manage to buy, I checked, and sure enough: while I'd entered my credit card information and it had been validated, there was one final "confirm order" step that you have to do and that I hadn't done. I've never done this sort of order before, and having to confirm the order twice wasn't something I expected. Next time I will know better.

After going through what we did get, Lisa determined that there are a small number of other things that she'd like to get for Christmas dinner that we missed this time. If we decide that we can manage a trip on Tuesday after work, I'll put that World Market order again, making sure it's confirmed and that I have an order number that I will print on paper this time, and we'll try one last crack at Reno before the holiday. And if I'm lucky, Whole Foods Market will receive another shipment of Strauss eggnog, too.

The last time we went shopping in Reno/Sparks was just before Worldcon. While we've been trying to keep things well stocked, stuff is starting to run out, with one of the signs being my breakfast today.

( The Last Odwalla )

Because the relatively cool spell we've had is forecast to end tomorrow, and because shopping on Friday-Sunday means having to dodge more idiots, it was time to refill the larder. Because the fan on the Astro's air conditioner has quit (and I've not made arrangements to have it diagnosed and fixed), I thought maybe it was time to take the Rolling Stone for a spin. As all plans for me to work from the Bay Area office were scuppered by the pandemic, the RV has hardly moved for months aside from when we moved it from the back of the house to the front to make more room for a project we're doing out back. Unfortunately, the air conditioning in the RV isn't working all that well, either, but at least the fan works and it does produce some cold air, so it was off to Reno/Sparks as soon as I could get off work.

As I merged onto the freeway heading west, there was a terrible racket coming from the back of the vehicle. Looking in the window, I saw what was wrong. Some of the rubber trim that covers screws on the upper part of the RV had cracked in the heat and was flapping around in the airflow, banging against the side of the vehicle. I exited at the rest area west of Wadsworth and removed the loose rubber trim. I suppose I can get a replacement for this stuff somewhere.

This was purely a functional trip: first to WinCo, then to Raley's. As I've mentioned before, while the shell of the RV is large, the amount of room to store stuff isn't that great, and putting $300 worth of groceries into the RV is a bit challenging, but I managed. As I expected, there was no more blueberry Odwalla in the case, but there was some of the chocolate, which Lisa likes, and it's good until October, so four of those went into the basket.

Perishables like milk and eggs I can get at the Family Dollar store between here and the post office (you see it behind the photos I post of the NLCFPD signs like the one from yesterday), so with luck it will be a while before having to brave the stores again. At least today the stores were not crowded, and nearly everyone was wearing a mask, and most of them were wearing them properly (over their noses). I thanked the clerks at both stores for doing so, and they seemed relieved. One of them said, "I wish more customers were like you."

My feeling is that arguing with a virus is like arguing with gravity after you jump off a cliff. Both are just as effective at changing the ultimate outcome.