Notes from Maine - 2022/12/11

I’m putting together my grocery list in another window. I’m mostly getting the standard stuff—my everyday food. I don’t get a lot of prepared foods, but lately it feels like a hassle preparing my own food. What does that leave? The choices aren’t great. 

Computer programming is fun. If you haven’t tried it, it’s not mysterious or anything—just a series of tiny, unambiguous steps that hopefully lead to a well-defined outcome. When the steps don’t get the desired outcome, maybe it’s because you failed to consider one of the “corner cases.” That’s a programming term, I think. Honestly, I’ve never bothered to look it up. “Corner case” is just one of those terms that made immediate sense to me the first time I heard it, and then I repeated it. Here’s how I imagine the definition of “corner case”:

If a single car is driving down a straight, paved road, let’s assume that it can travel at virtually any speed or acceleration without crashing. Introduce a bend in the road, and we might have to reduce the allowed speeds. Change the road to gravel, and we might want to limit aggressive acceleration. Once you’ve programmed for all those parameters, the car still crashes. That’s when you find out that one part of the road was gravel and it also had a sharp bend. We failed to make a rule for that. If we graphed out all the parameters, maybe that combination of circumstances would be in the corner of the graph. The crash occurred because we failed to accommodate all the “corners cases.” 

I have no idea if that’s where the term comes from, but that’s the picture in my head.

Anyway, the reason I brought up computer programming is because I’m ordering groceries. The website is terrible, and if you’re not incredibly precise when ordering, you’re going to get the wrong thing. Actually, even if you are incredibly precise, you’re likely going to get the wrong thing. “Red Vine Cluster Tomatoes” are listed by the pound (”Lb” appears is small letters under the picture), priced by the pound ($2.99/Lb.), but under that it says,  “Avg. Wt. 1.5 lb.” If you add the item to your cart, it’s going to add $4.49 to your total. 

But wait, they were listed by the pound, right? With every other item, there’s small gray text under the picture that tells you how they are sold. Grape tomatoes are sold by “Pint”. A can of tomato sauce is sold as “8 Oz.” Clearly, that small gray text tells you how the quantity box will work. The rules are different for vines? In the past, I’ve put a 1 for quantity, since the price seemed to be by the vine. I had no idea what to expect because the website doesn’t offer a guess for tomatoes per vine, just that the typical vine is 1.5 lb. The predicted price for my vine of tomatoes was $4.49. What I received was one tiny tomato at a cost of $0.40. 

My friend informed me that I was supposed to type a note indicating the number of tomatoes I actually wanted. Fair enough. I’m not opposed to writing. That led to a tomatopocolypse. I needed six tomatoes, so I put 6 in the box with a note that I wanted 6 tomatoes. I received twenty-two tomatoes with my order—six vines. 

“Some shoppers interpret things differently,” the person on the phone said.

“My note asked for six individual tomatoes,” I replied. “I received twenty-two.”

I was refunded and I ate a ton of tomatoes that week. They don’t take back produce. 

Mom says, “Ohjesuschryse, just go inside and get what you want.”

Fair enough. Counterpoint—I don’t want to go inside. It’s gross in there. It’s full of people, lines, and addlebrained employees, jugging dozens of unwanted vined tomatoes. I would much rather pull up at an appointed time and have someone load groceries into the trunk of my car while I smile, wave, and curse under my breath. One time I got home and found out that they had put someone else’s groceries in my trunk. That was fun. 

When I called and then drove back over there, they said, “Thank you for being honest and bringing this back.” Why would I want someone else’s groceries? What’s honest about bringing back a whole lot of useless stuff I didn’t order so I could get the things I actually wanted? 

So far, I have fruit, yogurt, lettuce, soy sauce, spinach—lots of spinach. I’m trying to incorporate a lot of spinach into things. I really don’t miss going inside the grocery store. I’ve learned to live with oranges that are so tart that I have to eat them one nibble at a time. Meal prep here is somewhat of a scavenger hunt. It’s fun in its own way. I found a potato the other day, left by Mom in some lower cabinet. For a while, it was impossible to get corn tortillas, so I always had them on my list. Eventually I remembered to remove them, but not before I had a half-dozen packages in my freezer out back. I used a bunch last night. 

I just placed the order to pick up at 6pm. That means I get to spend the day remembering all the things I forgot to order. Hope you’re well. Happy shopping!