Occasionally Kim trusts me to do the grocery shopping. Like when she’s sick or it’s after midnight and she’s poured a bowl of cereal before realizing we’re out of milk.

I wouldn’t call myself a professional grocery shopper but I’m definitely in the minor leagues with a good chance of getting called up to the majors next year. 

Here are my tips for how to shop like a guy:

1. Lose the list – Carrying around a list and checking items off is no fun. Why be a slave to a list when you can just stroll down every isle and toss into the cart whatever you feel like at the time.
   
2. No Man Baskets – Grab a cart with four working wheels. Never, ever tote around the man basket unless you want to look like a total dork.
   
3. Games and DVDs first – This is especially true at Fred Meyer where the games and DVDs are separate from the food. Always stop by here first. If you a find game or DVD you must have, you can adjust your grocery purchases to accommodate.
   
4. Skip all non-food isles – Don’t even think about buying a hair product, lotion or medication as it will always be the wrong kind, wrong size, or wrong brand. It’s far easier to skip these sections and say you forgot. Occasionally I’ll make an exception to buy dental floss but that’s it.
   
5. Never weigh anything – You look like a cheapskate trying to scoop out that exact pound of bulk cashews. I hate when I visit Baskin Robbins and some new employee decides to get all precise and weighs my ice cream. It’s tacky. Just scoop or bag the amount that “looks” right and move on.
   
6. Avoid the Truck/Fire Engine Carts – If you got roped into dragging a kid along, make sure they understand you won’t be pushing them around in those impossible to maneuver carts that look like a cheap Disney ride. I tried pushing around two kids in a fire truck whose turning radius was so wide, I could only go down every other isle.
   
7. Sample away – Sure the grapes might look good but you’ll never know until you try one. Or two or three. It’s a lot easier to sample a few before you drop 3 bucks on a pound flown in from some country you’ve never heard of. I feel like I’m doing the store a favor by sampling instead of taking the item home and then returning it when it’s bad. Anything in the bulk section is fair game as well. In fact, I think they encourage it.
   
8. Buy at least 2 of everything – I came home from the store today with 4 bags of whole grain tortillas, 2 cartons of Atkins shakes and 3 bottles of peanuts. Why return next week and buy the same item? Dairy products are the exception.
   
9. Ask questions – Especially in the produce section. People who work in produce love to extol their knowledge thereof. When I couldn’t locate a spaghetti squash a while back, I asked a nice lady who told me everything I’d ever want to know about squash and some finer details I could have done without.
   
10. Use the good bags – Most stores have two kinds of bags in the produce section: the stronger hanging bags with handles and the absolutely sucky ones that you pull off a roll like a paper towel. Fred Meyer hangs the good bags near the apples as to not make them so visible. Stuff a few extra bags in your cart if you plan to hit the bulk section.
    
11. Practice proper divider etiquette – Once you make it to the check out, look at the person ahead of you in line. If it’s a guy, don’t bother with a conveyer belt divider. But if a women is ahead of you, put down a divider before you pull any items from your cart to place on the belt. Women assume you’re trying to sneak that can of Slim Jim’s onto their tab.

I hope this helps the next time you’re called in to perform grocery shopping duties.

I attended a meeting at church today that included 5 adults and 5 boys ranging in ages from 12 to 16. The purpose of the meeting was to get the boys to work on half a dozen tasks. The person who called the meeting spoke the entire time. He spent the bulk of the meeting going through, in detail, each of the tasks and explaining what it would take to complete and how often he’d check in to ensure the tasks were done.

At the end, the leader asked the boys, “Can each of you commit to doing each of these tasks?”

The boys sat there. Finally, the leader, sensing they were confused, said, “Do each of you understand what I’m asking you to do?” Blank stares. The boys were frustrated. The leader was frustrated. Finally, one of the boys spoke up and said, “Can I borrow some paper and a pen to write all this stuff down?” 

I see this very scenario at least a few times each year at work and at church. And I’ve seen it with my kids when I overwhelm them with chores around the house.

So the lesson I learned today is to figure out what really needs to get done. You may have a list of 10 items that need attention. But dumping all 10 on a person or group is too much. Pare the list down to the one or two items that must get done. One or two tasks is manageable. I don’t need a paper and pencil to remember one or two tasks.

Sometimes less is more.

This goes for cheap eats but especially for nice restaurants:

If you must hire employees who smoke, tell them they can only smoke where customers cannot see them.

Nothing turns me off faster than pulling into the parking lot and seeing an employee or two smoking near the front or back of the building. This is repulsive enough that I’ll keep driving and take my money elsewhere.

This would seem like a no brainer but this week I’ve seen it several times. Smoking is a gross, repulsive, nasty habit the rest of the us shouldn’t have to take smell or walk through on our way to a meal.

I don’t know what I did or how it came to this. I have no explanation for what I’m about to write.

I’ve been using Slacker internet radio for a few months and like it a lot. But I’m starting to wonder if Nicole Richie is the DJ behind the scenes. No matter what channel I’m listening to, a random Richie song will play a couple of times a day.

I’ll be jamming out to the classic rock channel and enjoying some Boston or Pink Floyd and suddenly “Dancing on the Ceiling” will come on and shock my musical tastes to the core.

Maybe I accidentally tagged Lionel Richie as a favorite but I’m not sure what would possess me to do that. Maybe one of my coworkers is playing a trick on me which wouldn’t surprised me because a while back I forgot to lock down my computer only to return to my browser homepage set to this famously bad site.

I don’t hate Lionel Richie. He reminds of my days in 7th and 8th grade. But listening to one of his songs after a Zep tune is like drinking milk right after brushing your teeth. It doesn’t go down smooth.

For the last couple of weeks, I wake up each morning and walk downstairs to my computer. I launch Firefox and go to the Salt Lake Tribune website hoping to read good news about the miners. I continue to hold out hope that one of the bore holes will somehow find the pocket full of miners and his whole nightmare will be over. But each morning has been met with more delays, more equipment problems and more drilling. As an observer from over a thousand miles away, I can’t imagine what the families of the missing miners must be going through but it must be their own version of hell on earth.

This disaster has opened up a world that I didn’t want to believe existed. We don’t hear about these jobs or terrible working conditions until a tragedy shines light on a world few people understand. Watching the interviews with the spouses and children of these miners drives home the fact they are attempting to make a life of their own and support their family, just like the rest of us. Nearly all admit they are drawn to the mine because of the good wages. Few of them have much education and most are second or third generation miners.

The first national press conference that Robert Murray gave was a textbook example of how not to calm the relatives of the lost men. I was so angry watching him drone on about global warming and suspect earthquake activity when all these families wanted to hear was that he was doing everything he could to rescue their loved ones. It was a PR disaster that should have never happened. Yet over time I came to feel sorry for this guy. He’s clearly a miner at heart and doesn’t possess the skills to deal with the media frenzy that suddenly dropped on his world. If any good came out of that first interview it’s that, going forward, federal officials will manage future press briefings.

I hope the miners passed away quickly and didn’t have to endure days of darkness and cold without much food or water. And I really hope that changes are put in place that improve the working conditions for these people who risk their lives each day as they climb into a maze of tunnels, thousands of feet below the earth’s surface.

My mother-in-law lost her dog this weekend in a horrific scene. She writes a great tribute on her blog called The Littlest Hero.

She’s new to blogging and I hope writing this helps her deal with the loss. Ozzy was sure a funny, playful and caring little guy.

We’ll miss him a lot.

All is takes are three simple steps.

1. Open your RSS reader of choice
2. Remove the Boing Boing feed
3. Breath deeply