This evening, I was surprised to find a comment to a post I made back on November 9th. Somebody must’ve found us through some random Google search:

Hey Real world, thanks for the wakeup call. I’m well aware that Giant Eagle only runs that program for their benefit. It worked well for us that time because we’d just transferred a prescription to their pharmacy, which gained us an extra buck off their gas. Normally I’d have had to buy another $500 worth of groceries for that credit. So your estimate of overpaying by $80 was off by more than a small amount, at least in that case. That’s what made us happy.

Anyway, there’s not a helluva lot of choice in grocery stores where I live. We don’t have a Super Wal-Mart near us, and we wouldn’t shop there anyway; Wal-Mart is top (or, maybe more appropriately, the bottom) of the heap if you’re looking for scuzzy retailers. The other big chain here (TOPS) sucks ass. And the local chain, Heinen’s, is more overpriced than Giant Eagle and has lousy meat.

You want great grocery stores? Move to Vancouver. Maybe anywhere in Canada, I don’t know. But my wife and I just marvel at the stores in Vancouver.

Back here in Ohio, when Giant Eagle bought out the local food chain, we noticed prices rise 10-20% virtually overnight. I had two choices as a shopper; avoid being tagged and tracked with their Advantage card, paying higher prices for a lot of stuff because I wouldn’t get the “special card holder prices”, and not even getting the marginally cheaper gas to show for it. Or I could choose to savor a small victory and fight my battles elsewhere. Obviously I’ve chosen the latter. With gas costing what it does these days, every dime helps.

It’s going to get boring. I think half the time I never post because of this pressure I put on myself to post something witty and/or pithy (that was for Dave). Well no more! If I pick my nose and turn up something interesting, you’re gonna read about it. The sad flip side to that is I have nothing witty and/or pithy to say.

We’ve lost our Internet surfing ability here at work because the powers that be decided to install WebSense, which is a $12K corporate net nanny. Fortunately, at least for now, TwoDinks.com slips through the tight grip of the man. They claim the average person who has Internet access at work spends 17 hours per week on the Internet. That’s 17 hours that could have been spent standing on the ramp smoking and bull-shitting (I work at a Ford dealership). I laugh at their 17 hours of web surfing. I spend no less than 30 hours a week web surfing. But I guess it’s an average and some of my co-workers are clearly light weights.

Dave adds…

See now, that was both witty and pithy.

The Antigriddle. Just because he’s much more of a chef than I am. He made rack of lamb, after all, and I’d be happy if I knew how to properly dice an onion.

(yes, I know I was going to write more about the Second Semi-Annual Twodinks Gathering and Pub Crawl…I’ll get to it!)

I have only three words to say so far: Long. Friggin. Day.

Jul and I got up at 4:30 this morning to catch our 7 am flight to Toronto, the first leg of our trip to Vancouver to see Joe and Diana.

I must have struck the woman at the Air Canada ticket desk as the shifty type, because she wrote the dreaded “SSSS” on my boarding pass. This meant I was the lucky winner of The Full Body Cavity Search Lottery. I didn’t notice that I had the Scarlet Letter, and being the chivalrous guy that I am I offered to carry both my backpack and the gym bag full with camera, food, Julie’s purse, etc. in it. Since I had that stuff on my shoulders when we hit the checkpoint, it all became part of the TSA dog-n-pony show.

I got the usual pat down and sailed through the portal with no problem. Unfortunately, both bags were now about to be violated while I could only stand by helplessly. It’s a damn good thing I don’t load bullets while I listen to my iPod. Every electronic device needed to be swabbed for suspicious residue, and I was loaded with the things: both of our iPods, the digital camera, Julie’s Solitaire game, my laptop, my Treo, Julie’s cell phone and Blackberry. The swabber, while pleasant enough, was in no hurry to get his job done. I guess I looked shifty to him, too.

Four more words: Toronto’s. Airport. Still. Sucks. Last time we were there (1994), the place was so confusing even airport employees couldn’t tell us how to get where we needed to go.

It’s a damn good thing Julie and I are good travelers and get along well no matter what is happening around us while we’re on the road. We’re pretty well convinced that the GTAA (purportedly stands for Greater Toronto Airports Authority, but more likely it’s for Get There And Amble, because of the aimless way we wandered around the place due to poor signage and bus trips) has an ulterior motive when it comes to herding visitors from the United States around their airport: to make us fat Americans lose a few pounds so Air Canada can save a few pennies on gas.

A quick rundown on our route through YYZ:

1. Get off the plane
2. Take about twenty steps into the building
3. Walk through two doors, diagonally across a small room, then out another door into a waiting bus. Not that we couldn’t have taken four steps to the left of the first door we walked through, around the corner of the building into the bus, but the Torontoans are very proud of their wooshing doors and like to show them off at every opportunity.
4. Stand there in the widest bus I’ve ever seen, waiting for one more guy to join us.
5. The kneeling bus (we know this because it genuflected at least four times while we stood there) then pulled away and drove us roughly halfway to Buffalo.
6. Get out of the bus and enter a building. We walk down a long corridor to be greeted officially by Customs. They look at our passports here.
7. We walk through a little choke point where another guy (10 feet away from the first guy) looks at our passports again.
8. Then we proceeded to a luggage carousel to be reunited (briefly) with our bags.
9. Another gaurd-type person took our Customs declaration forms then pointed to another conveyor belt. Our luggage left us again and we continued down a corridor.
10. After another 10 minute walk, following the flashing green arrows, we came to a door. Through the door we encountered a security portal. Off came the shoes and jackets, out came the laptop, and we and our belongings were once again scanned for illicit metal objects.
11. We continued down yet another corridor which led to…another bus station. Beginning to think we might be heading off-course, we checked a nearby monitor. No mention of Air Canada flight 105 to Vancouver.
12. We asked a nearby Air Canada person about this: “That monitor only shows flights for the next hour.” Terrific. “Flight 105 to Vancouver?” Yes. “You’ll want to get on that bus.” To ourselves: another bus?
13. No matter, on the bus we go. Another long trip around the airport, past the shiny new International Terminal that will hopefully end the insanity
14. This time we finally find ourselves in a beautiful new terminal with great signage. This bodes well for our next trip through Toronto’s airport.

The flight to Vancouver was long and uneventful, about four and a half hours in the air. We landed ten minutes early and because we were on a domestic flight managed to avoid the long customs line we had last time we flew in here.

We met up with Joe and Diana and headed right out to the Tsawwassen terminal to catch a ferry over to Vancouver Island. As we approached the terminal, a sign above the road flashed a warning that the 1 p.m. ferry was almost full. About five minutes later the surly woman selling tickets growled “it’s full” when we asked for passage on the 1 o’clock. We parked in the assinged lane and climbed out of the truck, resigned to the idea that we’d have to kill two hours waiting in the terminal building to catch the next boat. But something made Joe stop and decide we should wait and see whether we’d make it. As the boat loaded up it wasn’t looking too good, but we ended up being the second last ones to make it!

…more tomorrow…