A Random Post About Random Things

Item #1: (as in Murray's band meeting notes)
I have wondered a few times in the last few years, and especially when I hear the Sleep Train commercial on TV, how all the different mattress stores stay in business. I mean, how often are people really buying new mattresses? I have had the same mattress for 13 years (yes, I know I should get a new one). I just checked the East County/South Bay yellow pages and there are 4 Mattress Discounters, 5 Sleep Trains, 1 Banner, 1 Ortho, 1 Healthy Back, and 4 other miscellaneous mattress stores. That's 15 mattress stores in just 2 regions of our county. Are these stores ever so busy that they can't help all the customers? Are they usually empty? Are some of them listed in the phone book but actually closed now? I know the answer is yes to that, actually, because the Sleep Number store that was in Parkway Plaza is no longer. And in these oft-mentioned "bad economic times", I wonder even more about how mattress sales are going. I guess maybe I'll wander into a Sleep Train one of these days and ask them.

Item #2:
Last December, I traded in my beloved 1999 pine green Honda civic. Jason said once that I had the most popular-colored Civic and it rubbed me the wrong way, as if he was saying I was unoriginal. (He wasn't, I was just testy that day.) The car I got to replace the Civic (another Civic) is blue, Atomic Blue to be exact. Guess what? Every Single Day I see my car, at least once. I now have the 21st century's most popular color. Great.

Item #3:
I have had these little metal Sanrio (Hello Kitty's brand) containers filled with coins for years and years. One is full of wheatleaf pennies, another has other American coins, and then another is full of a bunch of foreign coins from a bunch of different countries. I decided recently to sort the foreign ones and see if they were worth anything. Guess what? They're not. I have coins from Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, The Netherlands, Canada, England, United Arab Emirates, France, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Hong Kong, and The Phillipines. I know where most of these came from: John (the ex-husband) brought coins from The Phillipines, Hong Kong, Australia, and Japan. My friend Angie gave me some from Japan and Hong Kong. John and/or Angie may have also gotten the Korean coins. The ones from the UAE have to be from my grandparents when they lived overseas. Same with the Singapore/Malay money. And I know that some of the Canadian $$ came from my own wallet this summer as well as the random Canadian penny that makes its way into a US cash register and into my hand as change. I do not know, however, how I got Francs, Dutch coins, or English pounds. I have never been to Europe and don't remember being given these coins. Needless to say, they are worth nada; the Currency Exchange at the mall only exchanges coinage in the form of pounds or Euros. The lady behind the counter told me I could sell my little collection for scrap. Haha. I think I'll give away the Pesos (0.07 cents to the $) and maybe sell some of the other older coins on e-bay. Or maybe I'll just dump them all back into their little tin can and let them collect dust for another 20 years.

Item #4:
I went to the El Cajon Oktoberfest this past Sunday for the first time. In the last 10 years, the La Mesa Oktoberfest has become less German and more Salesman ie: more crap to buy, more back-cracking chiropractors, more non-Deutsch grub (last time I checked, pizza was not German). I have not been to the La Mesa O-Fest for a couple years and this year, I decided I would check out the other East County sausage soiree. It was a lot different. Much smaller, it is held at the East County German Club (or something like that). There were maybe 30 vendors versus the couple hundred at La Mesa. There was only one place to get each type of German food- one pretzel stand (these pretzels are as big around as your head), one sausage/kraut/potato stand, one drink stand, one pastry stand, and one BierGarten. There were many men and women in traditional dress- lederhosen and those pretty dresses the women wear. There was one stage where the band played, one dance floor, and several rows of tables for people to use for eating, drinking, talking. I stayed for about an hour and a half (I ate about 1/2 of my enormous $5 pretzel) and left. I can now say I have been to the El Cajon Oktoberfest and I can say that once was enough. I definitely appreciated the authenticity but I felt a bit out of place as I could tell that many of the people who were there knew each other. I prefer the anonymity of the La Mesa crowd. Maybe next year, I'll go to Germany...