anniversary gift list by year

as i flipped through the pages of my new calendar/planner, i found a page entitled "anniversary gift list by year." i've seen such a list before, but never actually read it until now. it was more entertaining than you might think.

for example:
on your 1st anniversary, you should receive paper, plastics, or clocks. paper or plastic WHAT? cardstock and spoons?

on your 24th anniversary, you should receive musical instruments. happy anniversary honey; enjoy your banjo.

on your 26th, you get original pictures. do stick figure drawings count?

on your 38th, you get beryl and tourmaline. assuming you've heard of either.

on your 41st, you get land.

on your 42nd, you get improved real estate.

on your 43rd, you get a trip.

and since those are three mighty expensive years in a row, on your 44th, you get groceries. GROCERIES! unless by "groceries" they mean "he does the grocery shopping happily and correctly for the entire year," that year is gonna be a problem.

tropicana

just realized that the apple juice i'm drinking is from germany, austria, italy, hungary, argentina, chile, turkey, brazil, china, and the united states. i had never thought about my juice being so well-traveled.

(this is the extent of my exciting life? i'm posting about APPLE JUICE?)

on a slightly related note, i'd just like to say that last night at super wal-mart, where i bought the aforementioned apple juice, i appreciated the entire customer service experience. there were plenty of employees around, seeing as how it was late at night and they were stocking the shelves after the weekend crowd. so, on most aisles, employees asked if they could help me find anything and apologized for jamming the way with carts and boxes and products. (no apologies necessary - they gotta stock sometime.) and when i was about to check out, the guy at the "20 items or less" lane let me check out there, even though i had WAY more than 20 items. so, thanks.

i avoid grocery stores on saturdays like the plague. i've discovered that friday night and sunday night are much calmer times.

before you know it, they'll have their own schools*

i tend to get irritated in situations involving prolonged forced small talk with strangers. that probably makes me a bad person. nevertheless, getting a haircut is one such situation. i go to the same salon all the time, where their staff turnover rate seems a bit high, because i have never had a haircut from the same person and the girls who are there never recognize my previous stylist's name.

as was the case tonight. so off we went down the same conversation trail. they must teach a particular order of questions there because it is always the same.

so do you live around here?
did you go to high school here?
are you in school? (they always tell me i look like i'm in college.)
oh, so where do you work? (they never recognize my employer and never know what being a grant writer means.)
are you single?
so do you think he's the one?

maybe it would be more uncomfortable to sit there in relative silence. i don't know... i just know i will have the same exact conversation again in six weeks or so.

*Seinfeld