What will 18 cents get you these days? Not much unless you shop at the pharmacy I shop at. I got all of the above items (which totaled $18.70 before tax) for a mere 18 cents this morning. They have a program where you get a percentage of your purchases back in bonus bucks (or whatever they call their program) every other month. The only thing I purchase at this particular pharmacy is prescription medication. I never even buy so much as a pack of gum from this place. So my bonus bucks are based on my prescriptions alone. I guess this is a case where taking a lot of medications pays off.

There was a bit of excitement in the drugstore this morning. The scruffy trio in line ahead of me was purchasing a bottle of Jim Beam and a pack of cigarettes. And even though it was only 10am they smelled and acted like they had already gone through a bottle of whiskey. As they go through the exit doors an alarm rings. The manager thinks that perhaps he didn’t deactivate the code on the bottle whiskey that keeps people form stealing it. So he does that again. He then walks through the door himself with the bottle to make sure that the alarm doesn’t ring. It doesn’t. Then the girl walks through the door and DING DING, the alarm starts buzzing again. So this time the manager asks her to open her jacket and that’s when he saw the bottle of booze stuck in her waistband. Does he call the police? No, he was too afraid of her and the 2 guys with her I think. He just made her pay for the bottle. They were scary looking people so I probably would have done the same.

And in the “ain’t that purdy” category we have the flat of flowers I purchased on the way home from the drugstore this morning. This means I will have to brave going outside and possibly running into the snake. I do plan to scope things out very well before each step or movement I make. You can never be too careful. I blame all of this on the self-proclaimed faith healer neighbor. We rarely see a snake in our neighborhood but since last week when she moved her daughter’s sandbox from the yard and threw it in the trash everyone on the street has been seeing snakes in their yard. I remember her telling me last summer that she had a family of snakes living under the sandbox and that she and Hannah would lift the sandbox up occasionally and look at them. So now that she has taken their home away they are on the move. Damn that woman! The G-man says “shouldn’t she be taking these snakes to that weirdo church she goes to”? You know, actually I’m surprised that she didn’t pick up a few of those snakes and give them to her daughter for a gift. After all the self-proclaimed faith healer is the queen of free pets.