Trader Joe’s Squeegee

I love Trader Joe’s. They do not exist in Texas, of course. We have to make do with Whole Foods and Central Market, and I do adore them both, most esp. Central Market, which is like unto church for me.
Hell, I adore just about anything beyond the grocery section at The Dreaded Wal-Mart, which feels about like buying my tofu from the local feed store.
But I digress (and isn’t that a shock?).
We hit a lot of Trader Joe’s stores on our trip, and we made several trips to the one in Portland, where we repeatedly stocked up on Cheap White Wine, not to be confused with Cheap White Trash.  We bought one of each of almost every bottle that was less than $5, just for fun. I tasted these but didn’t actually drink them (remember:  I was the Hostess with The Mostess that last night), except for one bottle of sparkling Spanish wine, which we saved and had with dinner in our room in the blazingly hot Redding, California (109 degrees) while learning way, way too much about Michael Jackson’s life and death. So when we were leaving Santa Fe, we thought we’d pick up some more bottles for the wine refrigerator, which we have once again begun to stock.
It’s Sunday morning. Check-out time at The Hugely Ruined Hotel St. Francis is 11 am. We check out, me gritching again about how disappointed I was in the entire Hotel Experience. We drive to Trader Joe’s, which is on our way out of town, and go in to get some wine. And discover the wine section roped off, with signs everywhere saying that wine isn’t sold on Sundays until noon.
Blue Laws drive me NUTS. It’s bad enough that people’s religious beliefs govern commerce, but when non-religious people are forced to go along, then it’s just wrong. When The EGE and I first married, blue laws still ruled our part of the world. There were all these things that you couldn’t buy on Sundays, and the local Gibson’s store would have whole sections roped off. You couldn’t buy blue jeans or skillets or, really, anything much but food.  Too bad for you if you worked six days a week and needed to do your shopping on Sundays, esp. because, back then, stores didn’t stay open 24 hours a day. Here’s an explanation about blue laws by David J. Hanson, Ph.D:
Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence to support the assertion that the blue laws were originally printed on blue paper. Instead, the word blue was commonly used in the eighteenth century as a disparaging reference to rigid moral codes and those who observed them (e.g., "bluenoses").
Other early blue laws prohibited work, travel, recreation, and activities such as cooking, shaving, cutting hair, wearing either lace or precious metals, sweeping, making beds, kissing, and engaging in sexual intercourse. The Puritans believed that a child was born on the same day of the week on which it was conceived. Therefore, the parents of children born on a Sunday were punished for violating the blue law nine months earlier.
Blue laws have operated to protect Christian business owners from competition on their sabbath. However, they don’t protect those (such as Jews and Muslims) whose sabbath is Saturday from competition on their sabbath. Thus blue laws have established a double standard in favor of Christians.
As you might guess, I think blue laws are about as stupid as anything anyone ever thought up. But then I think almost anything that has to do with supporting religious beliefs is ridiculous on its face, so never mind. You need to learn morals, not religious rules. You need to learn to do the right thing because it’s the right thing, not because you’re afraid of roasting in hell with David Duke and the heathens. If having sex on Sunday is going to make you evil, then we’re all in big, big trouble. What else are you going to do on a Sunday afternoon once football season is over and after your in-laws have taken the leftover roast beef and gone home to take a nap? It’s not like anyone’s going start any big project on a Sunday afternoon or shampoo the dog—oh, wait:  that would be against The Rules, too. Never mind.
You learn to be Good not because it’s in some book but because you learned early on that being Good makes life better all the way around.
[For instance, one of the things most valuable to me is the belief in treating animals compassionately. I think this is one of the most important things anyone can learn:  if you can act out of true compassion for a living creature that is not “like you,” (although of course, they all are, really), then you’ll be a better human being. I’m not talking about being kind to the cows you’re going to eat, or shooting that ten-point buck instead of beating him to death with a stick—that’s not true compassion. But if you are truly compassionate with animals, you’ll be a better human being all around. It’s not just a myth that serial killers usually start off torturing insects and animals. And treating animals well is certainly not something you learn from religion. Most religious people I know are carnivores, and that’s just the tip of it.]
And if being good has anything at all to do with when you get your hair cut, somebody give me a better clue, OK?
ANYWAY:  blue laws just drive me insane. Laws about when alcohol can be sold are silly:  anyone who wants to get drunk has plenty of time to stock up so that they’re not going to be forced to go to the liquor store at 2 am or on Sunday morning  and lie outside whimpering until it opens (our neighbors begin drinking early on Sundays; blue laws don’t slow them down a bit. Somehow they’ve grasped the idea of “stocking up,” which seems to have eluded those who wrote the laws).
So I’m in Trader Joe’s at 11:15 on a Sunday morning. Imagine how irked I am to find that I cannot buy wine until noon. Never mind that I have no intention of DRINKING the wine when I buy it:  I mean, really, it’s not even CHILLED, people!  The very least—the VERY least—they could do is to make an exception for white wine, don’t you think? Who in their right mind is going to come in at 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning and buy a bottle of white wine off the shelf and drink it before noon? It needs at least an hour to chill, right?
I did not hang around for 45 minutes. Screw the sparkling white Spanish wine in its cute little bottle.Too many calories anyway. Phbbbt.
What was my point? Oh:  the Trader Joe’s gift card. I found this at the check-out in the store in Portland and loved it.

Isn’t that cool? You’re supposed to put money on it, but I explained to the guy that I didn’t live anywhere near a TJ and asked if I could buy one, just to have. He told me just to take one. You can imagine how thrilled I was. (This was a TJ’s where I was spending quite a lot of money, anyway, so it didn’t make me feel guilty.) Plastic cards make excellent squeegees for paint or glue, and this one makes me very happy. If you live near a TJ, go in and get one of these. Put $5 on it, go back and buy a bottle of sparkling Spanish wine, and you’ll have yourself both a squeegee and a nice drink for a hot summer afternoon. And please tell them “thanks” for having such a cool card. Why can’t my MasterCard look like that? Well, maybe without the actual “Trader Joe’s” (TM) logo across the top. . . .