Happy Randomness

I love my roomies. They are willing to dance to Lady Gaga's Bad Romance during a study break. I'm secretly hoping they don't get their dissertations written so that they might be around for another year. (Okay, I'm really not, but it would be nice.)

I went grocery shopping this morning with what my grandmother would call the Geriatric Crowd: those over-sixties who flood the grocery after church. There tend to be less of them than there are the college kids who push around carts later in the afternoon. Anyway, I was in the baking aisle, sipping my coffee and trying to find a confectioner's sugar not derived from beets when a woman asked where I had found my bag of granulated sugar. I directed her to the end of the aisle and we bantered about our collective need for early morning caffeination and the pull of donuts with holiday sprinkles when she stopped:

"You know, you're a nice guy. You should totally date my granddaughter." She paused to look at my bag. "Or my grandson. Whichever works for you." She put her hand on my chest and chortled. "Oh, dear, I am so out of line, aren't I?" We laughed and parted with our sugars.

Later on, at the food co-op, I was in line with my vanilla extract when the woman in front of me asked about the NYT. There were none in the rack; I searched the other lanes and found a copy. Handing it to the women, I told her I understood the bleak prospect of a Sunday without the Times. "You must be from the East Coast," she said as the cashier scanned the bar code. I explained I was born and raised in the midwest, to which she responded, "That's why I figured Vermont."

In the course of grocery outing, I've been propositioned by a grandmother and mistaken for a Vermonter. It's been a good day.