bearshopping!

The bears are back after a month-long break! As my dear panda roommate was saying during our last appearance, this polar bear has been busy piloting her nonprophet (since her air force friend has declined assistance- he claims that distance is an issue, but really, isn't that the job of a pilot, to cover a lot of distance??) and is now taking a break from hibernation.

I know you faithful bear blog readers are wondering, "What does edithbear mean by bearshopping? Is she going to tell us a story about bears hopping around? Or will she be talking about the shopping habits of bears?" Excellent questions! In fact, I will be describing the latter (although, this pair of bears does talk a lot about hopping. We hop in the shower. Or, we hop into bed. Or, we hop on the metro/metrobus. This is really where panda came up with the nickname "edithhare". Contrary to what she claims in our previous banter, I have never in my life switched to an iceberg lettuce diet.)

Onto our shopping story. Saturday was such a beautiful day, so edithbear and panda decided to take a few shopping excursions, because panda is a self-appointed bored member of edithbear's nonprophet, and edithbear, upon coming out of hibernation, did not feel like doing much work on her pilot. Boredom and slothfulness drove us out into the beautiful day, and we made our way to Safeway to get our groceries. Panda mentioned that she needed to go to Costco later, and edithbear asked why we didn't just go to Costco to get groceries, if panda needed to go there anyway? Panda proceeded to remind edithbear that, as bears, they move on foot, or on icebergs, not in cars! So, in the absence of car space, there was really no place to store our groceries, save for balancing them on our heads, so it's better to just get them at Safeway and carry them the short distance home. Edithbear saw the true wisdom in this reasoning, so she agreed. All pandabear needed at Costco anyway was a free phone, and edithbear could just pick up her calcium chews there. So we got our groceries and came home.

Soon afterwards we set out to Costco for the free phone. Pandabear really needed this free phone because, you see, pandas need to be in touch with other animals, and people, ALL THE TIME, and so she needs to be able to use her phone while she's traveling on the metro on her way to the zoo. It would be disastrous if, for example, she got to Metro Center and saw that she had to wait another 28 minutes for the next train to bring her to see Tai Shan, and couldn't call him to let him know! And, as my bored member, she also needed to be on the same network as me and my pilot friend. Anyway, obtaining this free phone at Costco ended up to be a much more complicated ordeal than expected! The sales guy asked panda all these hard questions, like, which members of panda's family are on her family plan? Was panda the alpha panda, or did that honor belong to someone else in her family? Because, if someone else was the alpha panda, switching networks would be much easier. Realizing that her acquisition of a free phone at Costco might jeopardize the communication lines between all the other pandas in the world for the next six months, she decided to hold off on the network switch until she could carefully process the consequences of such an action.

This polar bear could tell that panda was slightly dejected though (she really wanted a chocolate phone because pandas love chocolate), so we went browsing through the rest of Costco for some consolation purchases. For some reason we ended up browsing through the fruit section and picked up a big 20-lb box of dinosaur eggs (because panda thinks baby dinosaurs are cute) and another 20-lb box of white nectarines (because they match edithbear's pure white fur). And we walked by the coffee section and realized we needed more coffee (since the bears sleep so much; we'd never wake up if not for coffee), so we grabbed a Costco-sized 80-lb Starbucks coffee bag. And THEN, panda saw some 100% Kona coffee, which was never there before, and since edithbear has only farmed coffee in the north pole, she was also eager to try out this mysterious Hawaiian coffee. So we picked that up as well (necessitating a future purchase of a coffee grinder--since it would be sacrilegious, edithbear was told, to grind Kona coffee any earlier than right before brewing time), along with a few other purchases (and edithbear's calcium chews).

All in all, the bears entered Costco intending only to get a free phone and about $15 worth of vitamins, and left with no phone and about $100 worth of groceries (fruit & coffee, plus some snacks), haircare products, and health products. Needless to say, we had to balance these all on our head for the entire metro ride home, still with no appropriate phone service to tell anyone our stories in real time... and panda didn't even use her practice head this time...