Right now I'm waiting for the friendly folks from Peapod to come make a delivery. I had been using WebVan, but that's obviously not an option any more. I know, I know, it's somewhat pathetic to order your groceries online and get someone to deliver them, but I'm willing to be that pathetic. I mitigate the shame (to myself, at least) by (1) only ordering from them about every 3 months, and (2) ordering all the really heavy stuff that I don't want to be stuck taking up the stairs. So, for example, I tend to order something like 16 cases of fizzy water and several 20-pound bags of cat food. See, the way they work is, you incur a delivery charge if your order is less than a certain monetary amount. If you order a lot of staples/stuff that won't spoil 4 times a year, you don't have to worry about the delivery charge, and you don't have to worry about the stairs.

This is evil, I know, but that's pretty much what I exploit Peapod/WebVan/whoever the next poor schmuck is for. God help me if they ever switch to charging for delivery by weight.

It occurs to me, at this late point in the game, that I should have picked another delivery window. I asked them to deliver from 8-10 p.m. That's when I'm home. But to those unschooled in my neighborhood, this looks like a scary-ass place after dark. (OK, fine, to those schooled in my neighborhood, this is a scary-ass place after dark. Not so scary that you don't want to leave your house, but scary enough that you don't want to be making yourself vulnerable by, say, leaving the back of your truck open while you schlepp 16 cases of fizzy water up some bitch's stairs, especially when said bitch really should be doing her own damn shopping.) I did not fully consider this when I placed the order. From now on I plan ahead, and keep the sanity and well-being of the Peapod guys/chicks in mind.

In other news, we had a long, difficult meeting about the status of the choral group for which I serve on the Board of Directors. God, that sounds stilted -- the group I'm on the board of. (Sounds slightly wrong, but not so pretentious.) (By the way, my favorite example of the absurdity of the no-ending-with-a-preposition rule is "Ending a sentence with a prepostition is something up with which I will not put.") We'll have an even longer, more difficult meeting on Wednesday. I'll let you know how that goes, assuming I survive.

It's a beautiful night, and I've turned off the aircon and opened all the windows. You gotta say this about my building/flat -- you can get a great crossbreeze with all these windows. I love it.