Deluxe Crackers

Ingredients

Peanut butter crackers

Grape jelly

More peanut butter

Nacho cheese

Make deluxe crackers by spreading jelly, peanut butter, or nacho cheese onto already peanut-buttered crackers. Each mouthful is an explosion of flavor, except for the peanut butter peanut butter crackers of course, for which every mouthful is an explosion of peanut butter.

New Phone

This week, in honor of the new year, I decided that I would stop hanging on to my flip phone. In the past, I've worried that if I get a smartphone I'll accidentally start using it at restaurants and when I'm having conversations with people. On the other hand, there are several pros of smartphones that have accumulated over the years: the camera, internet access, and google maps in particular are what made my mind up.

The decision was a push as much as a pull. My old phone plan, for reasons beyond my understanding, jumped to $30 a month, so with my new $30 smartphone and its pay-as-you-go plan, I expect things will end up being cheaper than before. As I see it, using a pay-as-you-go service means that I'll either have an affordable phone bill or I'll become some sort of social butterfly, so it's really a win-win situation.

Happy Returns

I told myself that I would return to blogposting when I returned to Atlanta, and now it's all happening together. There's no telling what the future will hold, but with any luck this will keep going.

Returning to the US in general has meant getting a new phone, switching back to Fahrenheit when talking about temperature, and enjoying the services of websites (like Pandora) not necessarily accessible in many other parts of the world. It also means getting back in touch with familiar people and places.

One such place is the Walmart Supercenter near me, and on the subject of returns, I saw at the cash register a sign saying that non-defective airbeds in opened packaging were not eligible for cash returns. Fair enough, I think, in the grand scheme of things.

The weather is hot and the roads are long, but air conditioning is plentiful and I know the bus routes. It's good to be back.