New Old Place

Spent much of yesterday and am about to spend a bit of to-day exploring my new neighbourhood. It's a part of San Diego I'd not been in much in the thirty or so years I've lived here probably because most of it seems to be miles and miles of houses. It's 1.8 miles to the nearest grocery store. I'm used to having everything in walking distance--I'm going to have to learn to stock up. Which should be easier, shopping for just one person. Now I'll be able to use the kitchen whenever I want so I won't have to eat out as much.

Also a couple miles away is a Rite Aid where I worked thirteen years ago. Tim tells me Rite Aid was about to go out of business when someone bought it recently and saved some of the stores from closing. The interior certainly bears little resemblance to the place where I worked those years ago. Bins of random, marked down merchandise and rough hewn shelves look like they came from a high school shop class. It looks like a remodel that became permanent when it was half finished four or five years ago. It kind of reminds me of the Crown Books, which have the air of those zombie ant bodies taken completely over by parasites--zombie versions of the store that went out of business a decade ago but lawyers are still trying to get rid of warehouses filled with Larry King autobiographies and G. Gordon Liddy's analysis of the political landscape in 1998.

The Rite Aid still smells vaguely the same, a distinct subtle mix of ice cream and the wood awnings exposed on the hillside location to the winds off the ocean it faces. Not a bad location to work in but I remember navigating the freeway onramp was a pain in the ass, especially during a rainstorm.