HEB complaint and Dawn's Birthday

So, I know not too long ago, I was singing the praises of HEB, and of course there are still many things I really dig about the store, but here are my first three complaints:

In a store that seems to stock everything, why can't I find non-pareils?  Fruits and vegitables I've never heard of, but no non-pareils?  Hardly any sprinkles at all from what I've seen.

Cart collection.  It seems that they don't do any cart collection until there are no carts in the store, and a swear I've seen those boys wrangling a cart train that was 1/3 the length of the parking isle.  Certainly nothing bad could come of that.

My next complaint, HEB can't really do anything about, but consider this an open letter to you customers:

A.)  Why can't you put your carts in the cart corral?  I can't tell you the number of times I've pulled away from a parking space because though I think it's open, it really isn't, and it's because some customer just left the cart in a space.  There are plenty of cart corrals people, use them!

B.)  Can you, the customer count to 10?  How about 20?  Then why are you constantly going to the ten and twenty item of less lanes with more then ten or twenty items?  You completely throw off the nice even flow of me getting out of the store in a reasonable amount of time every time you do that.  Oh wait, I forget.  You can count to ten and twenty so therefore you just don't care about the people standing in line behind you.  What's that?  There's two of you so really your 40 items count as 20 per person?  Doesn't fly with me, flapjack.  It's not like the mother of three gets to bring 100 items through the twenty item or less lane.  Oh wait, this is HEB, so yes.  Yes they do.

I'll be getting help at work starting next week, an undergrad from a time before I arrived is returning to help out.  While I am glad he's coming back, I have to say I'm surprised.  If I was him, I'd I've looked to a new lab to do research, just so as to get some continuity in my studies.  (Of course, I claim to be the worst undergraduate researcher ever, so what do I know?)  But, in short I'm glad to have the help, it frees me up to get started on other projects, as frankly, I was feeling bogged down a little by the one project I'm actively moving forward on.

For Dawn's Birthday, we went to Sodolak's Original Country Inn and had the Chicken fried bacon.    Dawn ordered a small steak, it ended up covering a 12" plate.  Even I only managed to eat about half my meal.  Saturday, to finish off Dawn's Birthday celebration, we are going to see the fightin' Texas Aggies take on the Miami Hurricanes.  Fight Farmer Fight!

One final thing, I've added Skype to my applications, so if you use that for instant messaging, let me know, and I'll add you to my contact list.