I've journaled on AOL for going on three years now. I have lots of regular readers there. The reason I came to Blogger is that I'm not sure AOL will always be around, and I wanted to stake my claim here before they go the way of the dinosaur.
I've taken part in a few memes, using the random-blog button, and following links on people's sidebars, and I've found lots of new connections. I thought it would be difficult to feel a sense of community here in this so-much-bigger Blogger-world, but it isn't so hard.
I pay attention to what people write about. Sometimes I'll read something in a blog or journal that will make me take a new look at things, or see things in a different way. Never any big changes, mind you. I'm living pretty much in a rut.
Here's a change I've made as a result of somebody's posting: I read this post the other day, and it sparked a discussion between my husband and me. The guy suggests we should all consider shopping at our home-town grocery stores rather than the big chains (Walmart, in my case).
Cliff feels there is something to gain from this, simply because if we don't support them, some day they won't be there. And then we'll have to drive farther when we need something in a pinch.
Our small grocery stores don't have some of the things we need. No-salt-added ketchup, no-salt canned tomatoes and other vegetables, for instance. Or lower-sodium Ritz crackers.
However, I've decided to take a small step toward supporting our local grocer by shopping there every other week, even if it's a bit inconvenient. On the other week, I'll go to the nearest Super Walmart and stock up on the items I can't get at Dave's Country Mart.
I'll let you know how it goes.
I do not have the luxury of the necessary evil called Wal-Mart, unless I want to drive one way about 45 minutes.
ReplyDeleteI do make a once or twice monthly trip to WM to pick up supplies in huge quantities. I also shop weekly at my tiny communities IGA (the only grocer) and I buy our meat at the Butchers.
Our IGA leaves a lot to be desired when cooking something other than plain old meat and potatos...but our meat is fresh and just about as tasty as you can buy. I am thankful for that.
I could easily drive into the next big town over (about 25 minutes) and shop at the Wal-Mart there, but we don't... Most of our shopping is done at the local winn-Dixie, 10 minutes the other direction. Yep, we live in the middle of nowhere and nothing is 'around the corner' LOL But, we do shop mostly at the Winn Dixie, and the local feed store, and anything else I can buy in our little town so that these smaller business can stay in business. We usually pay a little more, but I like that all of the checkout girls know us and say Hi!
ReplyDeleteWe are lucky that our little town is kind of in the center of a little rural area and so our Winn Dixie is pretty good and fairly large, but I do make a trip a couple of times a month to the 'big' town to pick up things that I can't get locally easily. This mostly involves things for our computers or DVDs or CDs, or clothing.. we don't have anything 'local' that has them.
We live in a smaller town, but with 4 grocery stores, so we shop here. I think your compromise was a good one.
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