Adventures in the Blogosphere …

Long long ago, in a decade far, far away (1990’s), a department store known as E-Mart opened in Korea to challenge the arrival of Wal-mart. Last spring, E-Mart declared department store victory as Wal-mart started preparing to retreat from Korea. Personally, I shop at E-Mart all the time. How often? Let’s see…I went in the other day to pick up some lotus root, and realized my pants, shirt, jacket and undies were all from E-Mart. E-mart plays this sickly-sweet E-Mart jingle every hour on the hour, and there have been times, due to a lengthy shopping list, or a deeply rooted browsing-lust, that I’ve heard the “Happy, Happy, Happy E-Mart” song 3 times in an afternoon. If you open my kitchen drawer, you will see a plethora of yellow E-mart shopping bags. Infact, it is those bright yellow bags with a big, black, stylized “E” on them that prompted this posting.

“Why on earth would you write a blog about a plastic bag?” I can hear some of you asking. I can also hear some of you saying “Hooray!!! I can never get enough blogs about plastic bags!!” I worry about some of you.

To get to the point, I was checking out Rick Mercer’s blog (www.rickmercer.blogspot.com) and he has recently posted another photo challenge. I was scrolling through the pictures of Joe Volpe like you’ve never seen him before, when I noticed that in one of the pictures he was holding an E-mart bag!! (With a baby in it, oddly enough, but an E-mart bag nonetheless.)

Okay, so it’s not earth-shattering news, and it didn’t make me think any lofty or profound thoughts. It made me think “Hey, that’s an E-mart bag.” It also make me think “Who the heck is Joe Volpe?” So before writing this post, I did some homework and found out he’s the guy in the Liberal leadership race who will accept $5,400 from any infants, toddlers, pre-schoolers or other young’uns that feel compelled to donate to his campaign. Infact, my cat was on her way to the post office with a donation before I stopped her and reminded her that $5,400 could buy a whole lot of catnip.

Adventures in Knitting…

Every Wednesday night, a few of us ol’ ladies gather for our weekly “Stich’n’B$%#ch”. I’m currently working on an afghan…same one I was working on last year…and judging by the lack of progress, I must be doing more bitchin’ than stitchin’. We all know I can’t do 2 things at once.

A few weeks back, Glenys gave each of us a skein of beautiful wool that she had spun herself. Not having any needles of an appropriate size, I’ve put off starting a project with that wool. Today, I was in a stationary store on an un-related errand, and my eye caught a bag of knitting needles collecting dust on a shelf. I picked the two straightest ones, and added them to my other items. After paying for everything, I did some quick calculations, and discovered I had just paid a whopping $0.30 for a pair of knitting needles. I don’t know what they usually go for, but I think that this pair was a bargain. Here’s hoping they’ll last the 8 years it will take me to finish the scarf.

In other news, nobody around here seems too concerned about North Korea’s latest brouhaha. From what I can see from this persepective, CNN seems more concerned than anybody else.

Adventures in Iceland…

Iceland is such an incredible country. I loved the landscape the first time I saw it from an airplane window. I loved it even more after spending a few days touring around it. It’s capital, Rekyavik, is absolutely the cleanest city I’ve ever been in. Everything is heated with geothermal water, and seems to run so efficiently. This morning, I noticed an article that reminded me of how much I like Iceland. Recently, all the streetlights in Rekyavik and surrounding towns were shut off for 1/2 an hour while an astronomer used a radio station to broadcast what citizens could see in the night sky. How cool is that? Police and public officials used the time to guage what might happen in the event of an unexpected blackout, while citizens used the time to appreciate the solar system. There were no crimes reported during the blackout. How awesome would it be for your city to turn off the streetlights for a little while, so people could look up and marvel at the stars. I think Rekyavik should make that an annual event.