It must be the Advent season; Miracle on 345th Street is showing as I type this.

The "War on Advent", meanwhile, goes on at Fox News, where they persist in mutilating the calendar. The Advent season runs for the four weeks before December 25, and the Christmas season runs for 12 days after that, ending on January 6, Dia de los Reyes Magos, also known as Epiphany.

What's Your Name, Little Girl?

I have wanted for decades to write a dictionary of surnames (family names) that explain what the family name means, when it originated, and where it came from.

Family names are fairly meaningless in defining who we are. With generations averaging 20 years, only 3% of your genetic makeup comes from your same-name family of a century ago. Or less: a recent study claims that 35% of all newborns do not have DNA from their mother's husband.

From the gene's point of view, people exist only to multiply that gene. Women, it seems, tend to marry men who will help their children grow up to be successful adults - but tend to get pregnant by men who are sexually attractive, so that their children will be more likely to reproduce.

And since we get our names from the man married to our mother, that means that we probably don't get any DNA at all from those who had the same surname a century ago.

What's My Name?

In so much as Dia de los Reyes Magos translates as "Day of the King Wizards", I would like to think that my family, 2 millenium ago, came from the Magi that supposedly visited the Christ child. That's obviously not likely; family surnames were adopted at different times in different places, but generally have existed only since the Dark Ages.

What may have happened is that an ancestor was born on January 6, or otherwise was associated with the celebration of the Epiphany somehow. There is a possibility that the Spanish surname, "De los Reyes" was in the family history and somehow mutated; the Celtic language survives in pockets on the Iberian peninsula, and we know there are Celts in our genealogy. Mostly, though, we're ignorant on that subject.

I don't think I'll ever get around to compiling that Dictionary of Surnames. Feel free to have at it - and if you succeed, be sure to look me up; I want to buy a copy.

A Revisit to Weis

With some assistance from her physician, I have finally convinced Blondie that she ought not be driving. The word "senility" is harsh and hard to face, but it's increasingly correct. She has great difficulty with short-term memory, and is easily confused. Chances are very good that she'd be OK behind the wheel, but it's just not worth taking the risk.

Long-time readers know that I caught Weis stealing my money. I haven't done business with them since then, but every so often, Blondie would stop there. She really wanted to go there today, and I took her. It's bad enough losing your freedom, and I don't want her to resent me because I want Weis to disappear from the face of the earth.

Our visit this morning didn't change my attitude.

We Needed Salad

Weis had bags of cleaned salad greens on sale, so Blondie picked up several. There were bell peppers, both green and red, and cucumbers as well, on sale at 10 for $10. Buying lesser quantities was at regular price, considerably more, so I picked up 4 cukes, 4 green peppers, 2 red ones, but we had to hunt and hunt to find plastic bags. There were several places where there were twisties for closing the bags, but no bags to close with the twisties.

Blondie asked a produce clerk for assistance. He said to check there and pointed ten yards away. Nope, none there, Blondie said when she returned. "Then I don't know," the clerk said. What the fuck? Should we, as customers, go into their back room and rummage around for plastic bags?

Blondie wanted a special flavor of Weis house-brand ice cream. She's gotten a box of it at Amelia's, and thought it was wonderful. The store didn't have any, though.

And Meat

Even without senility, people as old as Blondie and I retell the same stories over and over and over. She'd told me several times that this store marks down older meats on Sunday morning to really low prices to clear out overstocks.

I wasn't particularly impressed by the value, but a lot of being a good husband is keeping your mouth shut when it doesn't really matter. She went looking for the bargains she was sure she would find, and there weren't any. Another part of being good husband is not saying, "I told you so", especially if you had shown the good sense to not tell her so in the first place.

And Checkout

I try to keep an eye on the cash register when we check out, no matter where we are. It's easy enough to accidentally hit the wrong key, and easy enough for clerks to have one price in the computer and a different price on the shelf.

When the cashier got to the bag of produce, she rang up the three items separately. First, 4 cukes. Then she rang up 34 green peppers. Thirty four green peppers? I asked. Ah, but I didn't need to. There was a limit on how many you could buy at the 10 for $10 price, and the cash register knew that. She had to walk several aisles over and wait to get a supervisor to let her unring the sale.

Seems to me that if you trust someone to handle your money, you should trust them to correct their own typos without supervisory approval. After all, sometimes the typos will be customers not knowing what the price is for an item, and deciding not to buy the item after seeing how expensive it is.

Fixing The Typo

The 34 green peppers were voided, and then 4 green peppers were rung up. Then she rang up 10 red peppers, and for some reason, was able to unring the sale of 5 red peppers, and then unring yet another red pepper. That brought the total number of red peppers down to the four peppers we were purchasing.

Except that we only bought two red peppers. I didn't realize what was happening until I read the cash register tape in the parking lot. Did I want to go back in and deal with Weis in order to get a refund? No. I've dealt with them before. It's not fun dealing with Weis, and that's an understatement.

The Sidewalk

Given my hip, I often have trouble carrying in groceries, but some days are better than others, and today, I was walking better than average. Of course, that being the case, the load was fairly light, and I was able to park smack dab in front. It's when my hip is really bothering me that I have to tote really heavy loads really long distances.

And, of course, it's on days like this that Blondie decides to help me carry in the groceries. She made the final trip, for a last final bag, and to lock up the van. She was just wearing a form-fitting electric blue sweater and color-coordinated slacks.

Blondie weighs about twice as much as a skinny high school girl, but she still has a waist, and her hair was bouncing nicely off her shoulders as she was walking, and her smile was fully 1000 watts as she approached the front door. Senile or not, she's a good woman, and the fact that she's pretty is a nice bonus.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Advent - bad retailers - Dia de los Reyes Magos - Epiphany - genealogy - senility - surnames - War on Christmas - Weis