Let's go shopping!

We're actually pretty busy here at HAWSEPIPER's Afloat Global HQ/ Money Factory. We're cranking out quality cargo on a daily basis, and between weather and scheduling, there just hasn't been time to get any damn fresh groceries.


 Tomorrow was set to be St. Famine's day- the day when I ran out of caffeine. And also food, but the caffeine is the important take-away here. I've been grumpy for 2 days, husbanding my precious supply of caffeine. Being out of green stuff and frozen meat/chicken, but having canned stuff onhand, I could have held out a while, at least another week on canned food, but I would have been an absolute a-hole to live and work with.

 It's the caffeine, not the food, that's the issue. I needs that shit. It's my Lithium.

         So, this afternoon we have a break between jobs, but there's no room at the inn for this virgin Mary, so after anchoring I hitched a ride on our assist tug and got a ride into Brooklyn.


 The grocery story I chose is right next to the Barclay Center (a stadium) in Brooklyn, and turns out, there was a basketball game going on. So that put 10,000 excitable people between me and the damn store, but OK, I can handle that.  For some reason, the crowd outside the stadium was really ill-behaved. People screaming, cops wading into the crowd and yanking people out, etc, etc.
 Oh, turns out, it was also EBT recharge day. The grocery store was a fucking war zone. I'm barely even exaggerating. I saw tho very large women in a shoving match over fucking doritos. People were yelling to other people in other aisles, kids were throwing shit (I got a can of tuna wedged under the wheel of my cart from one feral little bastard, made one of my cases of soda in the underside rack fly out into the aisle. Little shit.), and navigating the aisle was barely possible.
 It was like the Cabbage Patch Doll mall riots from the 80's meets Black Hawk Down.

 We use a car service to do grocery runs- it's a benny arranged by my employer. As such, I didn't have to use the long and ungovernable taxi service line out in front of the store. I called for my ride, waited 20 minutes, and the guy showed up. Then a very loud, very fat woman (I think) tried to get in my ride before me. I was polite, kinda off balance, really, and just said that this was a company driver who was picking me up. The woman then got in front of the car, looked at the plate, and argued that the car had a TLC plate, so it was her taxi, as she was ahead of me in line (she wasn't actually first. There was a wild-eyed Jamaican couple who were as miserable as I was there). I let the driver handle it.
  While this was going on, a Nigerian taxi driver was screaming at another group that he wasn't giving them a ride, as black people never paid without a fight, so he was holding out for a white or asian person.
 Well, that went over just great, and unfortunately the prick was ahead of us and we were boxed in, so I got to watch that little show while I was sitting in my cab being eye-murdered by the Brooklyn Hambeast who had tried to Shanghai my ride. I lost count of how many times that women said 'fuck you' to me through the glass, but I'm sure I could ask her daughter who was with her, who might have been 8.

 Overall, it was a pretty good reminder of how I am not an urban aficionado.
 But you know, the best part, was that when I was on the road home, the night dispatcher (between lost time and lines, it was now 4 hours after I left the HQ) let me know that one of our assist tugs would be bringing me back out to the HQ, and it's the one my nephew works on, and he's just 18 and just got back a few days ago from a trip to Ireland, so I  got to catch up with him and see some great pictures of the Auld Country.

   And Today's St. Patrick's day, one of my favorite feast days of the Catholic church, and I got to see pictures from places that thus far remain unknowns to me. By the time we got out to the anchorage, I was recovered from the melee.
 Well, I still hate people, but that was already the case.