Losing My Mind?!?

Just a quickie post this morning to note a few interesting (well, they’re interesting to me, and it is my blog after all) items.

Item 1 (in which I wonder if I’ve lost my mind)
Yesterday after work I was at the grocery store picking up a few things as N and I were about to make homemade brownies (from scratch even, which BTW turned out absolutely fabulous and made a great dessert with icy cold glasses of milk to wash them down). When I got through the checkout line I went to pay with my debit card, as is my customary habit, and couldn’t find it. I checked not only where it should have been but other pockets too. Nothing. Fortunately, I had enough cash on me to pay for my purchase, and I walked out of the store wracking my brain trying to think where my lifeblood, err. . . debit card could be. After retracing, in my mind, the last place I remembered using it and seeing it I came to the conclusion that I must’ve left it at Steak ‘n’ Shake when I paid for dinner the night before. I had the receipt nicely folded and tucked away in the appropriate pocket of my purse but not the debit card. Had I left the debit card sitting on the little tray on the table? I could remember taking care to fold the receipt so carefully and sliding it into my purse. Could I remember putting the debit card there too? No, no I couldn’t. I could only remember seeing it sitting there, in front of me, on the tray on the table. Good grief! Could I be that stupid?!? Alas, the answer is not only that I could but that I am. When I returned last night to ask the manager if perhaps my card had been left there, he asked to see my drivers license, verified that I was the same person as the one who leaves her debit card behind for no good reason, and went and got it from somewhere in back, presumably where it was locked up safely until I arrived. I checked my balance and transactions online this morning and will continue to do so for a couple of days until I’m pretty sure it wasn’t used nefariously.

Item 2 (where I cackle with glee when someone else gets their just desserts)
About a year ago a piano bar opened nearby. It was trying to be an upscale place in a borderline derelict local area, trying to revitalize the area I suppose you could say. When they opened they tried to get a local character, a homeless guy who minds his own business and never begs but just hangs out in public places where he can stay warm in winter and cool in summer, banned from shopping center in which they were located. He refused to leave. People who know and care about him (myself included) came to his defense and tried to get the piano bar owner to back off of him. The local paper tried to interview him, but he wasn’t interested. He just wanted to be left alone, which is what he always wanted. I exchanged heated emails with the bar’s owner. It was clear we approached life from two completely different views. He came from the view that free enterprise and capitalism trumps all, that we must make everyone and everything look just so very nice so we don’t scare away potential customers. I came from the live and let live, as long as nobody is bothering anybody then all is fine, and I wouldn’t want customers who would let a little thing like a quiet, non-pushy homeless person scare them away. I informed the bar owner I would never set foot inside his establishment unless he backed off of the homeless guy and publicly apologized. I knew others who did the same. Yesterday the piano bar closed. Good riddance I say! Some may say that the homeless man who hangs out nearby scared customers away causing the piano bar to close. I say the homeless man was here first, is a beloved member of the community, and it is only appropriate that he is still here, and that the narrow-minded bar owner had to close his business when reasonable people like me refused to back down on our stance. I love piano bars. I would’ve loved to have gone to this one except for the fact that I couldn’t support a business with an owner so callous. It would be interesting to me to find out what factors led people to not frequent this piano bar. How many would say they never went because of being scared off by the homeless guy sitting quietly on a bench a short distance away? How many would say because they were supporting the homeless guy? And how many would give any variety of reasons (I’ve heard from more than one person that the service was terrible) that had nothing to do with the homeless guy?

Item 3 (where this “quickie” post must be recognized for being anything but quick, but I promise this is the last, and shortest, item)
N and I went to see the new Transformers movie recently. Is there a reason that a movie that is targeted towards kids and has a blatant tie in with kids toys has to be made in such way that it earns a PG-13 rating? Did they have to use so much offensive language? Did they have to make so many blatant sexual innuendos? N and I both go to see movies like this for the action, for the shootings and fights, for the cool transformations from vehicle to autobot and back, not to watch some little autobot hump Megan Fox’s leg. Do they really think those elements will draw in the teen/twenties demographic? Could they have put more effort into the good stuff (action scenes) and had fewer scenes of dogs humping each other (I suspect that’s the only reason Mojo has a new doggy pal in the new movie)? Could I get any more curmudgeonly (I had “more curmudgeonly” to start with only to have Spellcheck suggest “curmudgeonlier” only to then have it suggest “curmudgeonly” after I made the change so I’m back to my original wording) in my old age?!?