I don't like getting up early at all, but I do like being up early, especially in the late spring and early summer when early morning is the only time of day it's fresh and cool outside. When I left the house this morning there was a deer exploring the side woods. She high-tailed it into the back woods (literally) when she saw me. That made me feel like the early-birdiest of early birds. ;)

You know, watching people is one of the most amusing things in the whole world. I could sit in a waiting room for three hours, just watching people, if it wouldn't look so odd. I was having immense fun at the grocery store this afternoon watching a father and son whose path kept crossing mine. The father looked like he had American Indian blood in him, and was dressed like a construction worker. The son looked much more American, and he was almost as tall as his father. They parked right beside me - an old brownish Volvo with a severely dented hood - and walked into the grocery store without saying anything to each other. The boy looked a little sulky. I ran into them on the flour isle and the canned goods aisle, and down by the fresh meat, and told myself they'd probably be right in front of me in the check-out line. When I went down to the self-checkout lanes a bit later, they were just finishing in the lane adjacent to mine.

Now you have to be aquainted with Food Lion self-checkout procedure to get all that was funny about this. You are guided through the process by a dictatorial female voice, and informed of every detail of the transaction as it occurs. As I stepped into the adjacent lane, I heard said dictatorial female voice informing the two "Move your canned green beans to the belt. Savings: two cents."

They were hugely tickled by this. About the third or fourth can, the father starts saying "Oh Brendan! here we go!" He'd cock his head and wait through the "Move your canned green beans to the belt" part, then chime in with the "Savings: two cents" part. Every time he did this they were enchanted afresh with the beautiful absurdity of saving two cents. The boy didn't look the least bit sulky anymore. I think his father was more amused than he was by the "two cents" part, but he was amused enough by his father to laugh every time.

The father was evidently teaching his son how this self-checkout process works, so he went down to the end to bag groceries while his son put the money into the appropriate slots, got the change, and almost forgot to take the receipt. When they walked out through the sliding doors they were still laughing.

There's a little TV monitor that sits on the fresh meat counter at Target, and every day it's playing, over and over and over and over, a female voice cooing "Dinner just got easier." Kimberly's never tired of mimicking her. The whole time I was listening to the father and son, I was remembering our fun with the "Target TV." I guess human nature really is the same everywhere, even in its quirkier aspects.