The place I am staying at has some old, excess building materials that need getting rid of.  So, I volunteered to try to sell some on Craigslist.

Normally, used materials wouldn’t mean much but this place is 20,000 square feet and so there is a considerable amount of everything.  Put another way: one can get enough cast-off materials to do a whole small to normal sized house! Furthermore, the previous owner hadn’t really lived in it and so a lot of stuff was used but very good.  And amongst that stuff was a bunch of tongue and groove clear cedar 1×6.  The kind of stuff I can’t really afford new.  But we are selling it for 25 cents a lineal foot or 50 cents a board foot and it is a bargain.

I may even buy some….but it smacks of carrying coals to Newcastle….

So buyers are coming.  And that is good.  It is fun.  But here’s the weird thing…..makes no difference how good the deal is, each buyer feels obliged to bargain.  I just laugh.

“Waddya gonna do?”, I say, “That parcel of 12 planks is $22.00.  And I only count 3/4 of it anyway in case there are splits or whatever.  There’s 28 dollars worth of wood in there and that was calculated at the 25 cents rate.  Bought new it is ten times that.  Ya wanna bargain me down to $20.00 a bundle?  Really?  You should know that the proceeds of this sale go to charity.  We give it to sick children!  But, if you can’t pay that, I’ll just give you the wood.  For free.  Why not?  Maybe you need it as much as the little sick kids.  Do you?” 

But I am saying this with an obvious tongue-in-cheek tone and smiling.  Sometimes I affect an accent, like some kind of middle eastern bazaar rug dealer.

And the buyer says, “Uh, no…I was just kiddn’…no, really…$22.00 is fine.  By the way, which charity is it?” 

“I dunno.  I made that up.  The owner gives money every Christmas to sick kids so I just said that.  I have no idea if it comes from the sale of used building materials or not.  I just said it to mess with ya.  Just bargaining back at ya.  ‘Sick kids’ is always good.  But he really does give money away to sick children so it is not a real lie.  Maybe a little bit, tho.  Fun, eh? So how much do you want?”

“So, no bargaining?”

“Nah.  But now that you introduce the subject, I may try to bargain you up, if you want?  That could be fun.  How about $25.00 a bundle?  You know, for the sick kids….?  C’mon, I’ll even help you load the truck.  Hmmmm….gimme $30 a bundle, waddya say?…going once…?”

“No!  No!  $22.00 is fine.  C’mon, I’ll take ten bundles…sheesh…you are a weird guy!”

“Soooooooooo…could I interest you in a pallet of granite…It’s that fine quality stuff they don’t make anymore, ya know?  Not in North America, anyway.  Sometimes you get some from Europe, eh, but man oh man, that European granite is not cheap, know what I mean?  Not like that cheap Chinese crap granite.”

“Really…well, I don’t know…

“C’mon…think of the kids…and nothing says Christmas like granite, eh?”

“I remember it distinctly.  It was 1985 we last saw you two!”

“And I remember seeing you guys after that but it was just for a few minutes around the turn of the century, I think…………But we saw J last year sometime when he whupped me in a game of chess!  Haven’t seen D in years!”

And so it was that six old friends got together for dinner at a little greasy chopsticks Thai restaurant last night to reacquaint ourselves after a long time apart.  It was a lot of fun.

Despite a few encounters remembered or forgotten in the interim, the basic, regular-gathering-type relationships ended some thirty or more years ago.  No bad memories, we just wandered off in different directions.

We had started out as three college friends who played chess into the wee hours of the morning and shared coffee and our twisted senses of humour while doing so.  Twisted being the operative word.  S was married to Jo but Ja and I were single at the start.  Within a year or so that imbalance had corrected itself and so the six of us became a loose and friendly social unit.

But it wasn’t for long.  S & Jo took up their professions outside the city soon after and started to act like a family-in-the-making, Ja and D were doing much the same thing albeit a year or so later while remaining in the heart of the urban beast.  Sal and I kinda wandered some, traveling and moving, undertaking different jobs, eventually forming the basis for a family unit much later and half-way out into the burbs.  Our friendship was great but our synchronicity with each other was out of whack.  We grew apart for reasons logistical more than anything.  Life just got in the way and the lives we  eventually chose were not as compatible as the ones of the college chess players.

I am sure that the above is not an unusual story.  College friends grow apart over the years and then get together and reminisce about old times, do some catch-up and plenty of hugs are shared.  And that is what we did last night.  And, as stated, it was fun.

‘Cept my old friends are whacked!  Omygawd! I haven’t laughed so hard in years.  These lovely people are truly great characters.  They are so different.  In some ways they are not-so-different and then, just as you are lulled back into a sense of knowing them again, out comes some quirky eccentricity that just puts me on the floor.  It was like an episode of Seinfeld last night.  It was great.

Of course, any reader wouldn’t appreciate reading about this (it is clearly one of those ‘had to be there‘ moments).  And, for the most part, these kind of moments require thirty years to set up.  But I was hysterical.  “I really missed you.  I love you guys!” 

D – the clear and distinct winner in the eccentric category – gave me a suspicious look and, with an accusatory tone to her voice, admonished me sharply, “How can you say that!?  You don’t know us any more.  We have all changed.”   And she glared at me as if I was wrong and bad and slightly insane.  Classic D!  The sentiment and delivery, of course was said in exactly the same way as she might have done thirty years ago.  It was as consistent with her character as anything.  It could have been 1985.  And I broke up.

We parted at about 9:00 pm and I laughed all the way home and found myself grinning and shaking my head for hours afterwards.

Yes, of course, we’ll do it again.  And soon…….there is so little time and so much laughter to be had.

So, Fukushima, eh?

Two years ago a tsunami hit Japan’s national power producer’s (Tokyo Electric) nuclear reactor there and virtually wiped out the area including the ocean in front of it.  Gobs of radiation leaked out of the plant.  Tons of destruction.  All sorts of things died.  People getting cancer.  It’s a horror show.

And now it is coming our way.

The hysterical media (the blogger-sensationalists) are warning of ‘desolation’ on the west coast and the whole of our waterfront from Alaska to California being uninhabitable by 2030.  Already there are reports of sea lion infant mortality rates in excess of 42%.  Herring up our way are found to be inexplicably bleeding from gills and eyes.  Sea birds are floating dead from no visible cause.  T’is the end of days.

And one science-oriented resident up the coast I know of goes nowhere without a geiger counter.

The good news?  The geiger counter has not yet registered anything but normal since the scientist started carrying it around.

So, what is the truth?

My sources say, “There ain’t any we can find!  Lies by omission.  No news is good news, it seems.  Can’t find out much.  We believe there is a conspiracy of silence around the whole thing.  All we do know is that every day for the last two years 300 tons of radioactive water has been discharged into the sea and that has to add up.  And it is still flowing in to this day!  But neither Japan nor Canada is saying anything.”  

My point is: If Rob Ford picks his nose, I hear about it.  If he picks his nose at a hockey game, I hear about it for a week.  The CBC and Global and even some of the US news corporations will report that kind of nonsense all day long.  But real news?  Really important information?  Stuff that really matters?  Nothing.

Our definition of news?  Which hockey player got hurt or what body parts Miley Cyrus has been exposing lately?

On an obvious level, news is a travesty.  Dig a smidge deeper and one wonders if there isn’t some kind of policy or quasi-agreement to well, keep the people stupid.

But keep ’em entertained, too.  They are easier to handle that way.

The truth is, of course, that Miley Cyrus and Sidney Crosby and even Rob Ford have an interest in staying in the news and so it is easy to ‘report’.  My quess is that Rob Ford has a publicist!  But reporting on nucear accidents in foreign countries?  Well, that would require real reporters doing real work and incurring real expense.  And that cuts into the bottom line of the so-called news corporations.

It also cuts into our collective intelligence.  Methinks we are getting stupider.

From good ol’ Sherlock Holmes: lack of evidence when there should be some is still some kind of evidence….Sherlock pointed out that the dog NOT barking in the night was an indication that the thief was known to the dog and therefore the suspect list in the case of the horse being stolen was narrowed.  In the same way, we are learning about our life off the grid…………….OK…..it is a bit of a stretch but bear with me.

We found that our lifestyle changed living feral and reported the changes in the blog over the last few years as we became aware of them.  Basically it was comparing rural to our former urban.

But, by coming to the city and living urban, it has been revealed other changes that are now seen from the opposite perspective.  Now we are comparing rural to urban from the urban perspective.

For instance; I was shocked to find myself filling the tank of the old Pathfinder five times already!  We have been here just over two weeks and I have spent a minimum of $300 on gasoline!  That takes five months to do up in fantasy land.

I won’t describe again the monstrous amount of time wasted in traffic getting anywhere but I can add that, despite vast square miles of commercial and industrial sprawl we still seem to have to drive half way across the metropolis to get something relatively ordinary.  Seems odd to me, anyway.  It is not like I am trying to build a heavy water nuclear reactor or anything.  My goals are modest.  Take a tool in for repair, find a welding helmet, that sort of thing…………and I went to Richmond and Burnaby to do that.  Started out full of gasoline, filled up when the day was done.  Crazy.

Here’s one: it is significantly more dry.  When we live at home (same basic climate) we live outside and we live on the water.  Our heat is derived from the wood stove.  We are ‘moist’.  But down here we have a ‘modern’ heat source, we are back from the sea and the building is ‘temperature controlled’.  As a result of this minor change, both Sal and I are noticing how dry everything is. Static-y, too.  We are ‘dry’.

Don’t see many bugs either.

Already watching more TV.

That one is not fair as an example urban/rural comparison ’cause, in theory I could have a workshop here and be doing chores and building sheds and reverting to my new-old ways but I don’t have my tools, I don’t have a shop and most of my projects are home related so there is no point to trying to do that down here.  ‘Pass me the remote, sweetie’.  Bottom line: I am watching more TV!

And I could go on.  But I won’t.  ‘Nuff said ’bout that.  You folks already know the city.

So, I’ll end with a tie-in to the dog not barking in the title above………………….our dogs aren’t barking!  Firstly, they can’t really bark as they were larynx-lasered by the breeder when they were young so that they would ‘show’ well and not be heard.  A crime, we think.  But Fid has half of his voice and he is our alarm system up the coast.  He ‘owns’ the ten or so acres of space around our home and he sees and notifies us of any changes or trespass.

Not here.  Down here, he has staked out a ‘dog’s territory’ around the yard but has become so used to the comings and goings of strangers (the trades engaged in the renovations) he barely looks up.   It is the equivalent – literally – of him saying, “pass the remote sweetie.”

It’s creepy.

I have very few heroes.  Maybe none.  We all have feet of clay.  But Nelson Mandela?  Maybe.

I never knew Nelson.  Not personally, anyway.  He was media acquaintance only.  But I felt I knew him a bit.  A very little bit.  Like one might feel a ‘connection’ with Ghandi or Churchill or JFK.  He was one of the good ones.  And, I think, one of the BIG ones.

I never felt a connection with Mother Teresa……..maybe she was too good, ya know?

Most people are not known at all.  They are just part of the madding crowds.  Fodder for someone else usually.  Corporations, always.  They are the hoi polloi, the strangers, the foreigners.  They are the ‘others’,  the more-poor, the more-rich, the lame, the pigment-different and, of course, the ‘celebrities’.  They are the madding and maddening crowds.  I don’t know most of them. They certainly don’t know me.

We also have the bad ones.  Ones we don’t really want to know but become known despite that.  Rob Ford, politicians-in-general, bosses-of-bosses, dictators, criminals and others that don’t seem to exhibit any real ‘connection’ with the common people.  They may be good in some way.  But they seem bad.

I did some kind of loose calculation some time ago and figured out that we were lucky if we ever got to know closely say, as many as 700 people in our life-time.  I have no idea how accurate that crazy estimate is but one thing is for sure: we don’t get to know any kind of a significant percentage of the people-on-the-planet.  .00000001.   Even the celebrities and the famous don’t.  For the most part we and they are all unknowns in intimate and personal terms.  So, at best I know 225 or so good ones, 225 bad ones and 225 who-knows?  (Twenty five or so are family and they are exempt from this critical analysis for reasons of personal safety).  Maybe the ratio is different…I seem to know many more good ones…..but I dunno………..

So, it kinda boils down to the good, the bad and the ugly, doesn’t it?  Enemies, allies and cannon-fodder is another way to look at it, I guess.  Them and us and those who don’t count.

That’s not good.  Because we are all in this together.  Separation is not in our best interests.  And the Nelson Mandelas seemed to know that.  They lived and died for that.

I am not that good.  Never was.  Never will be.  Couldn’t even cut it in Boy Scouts.  I’d drill for oil and sell Meth before I did 27 years in jail like Nelson.  I am clearly in the ‘fodder’ category.  Neither good nor bad.  Just fodder.  OK, a smidge bad, perhaps.

And that is why this blog is about Nelson Mandela.  Even if he wasn’t all that good (who really knows?) he represents that which is good in people and, in this day and age, that is worth noting all by itself.

In a time when senators cheat on their expenses, Prime Ministers lie and crime is made into a video game and criminals are an accepted part of the neighbourhood, when morals have become so fluid and flexible as to mean nothing anymore and when money is the new symbol of worship, it is only right that we at least acknowledge the passing of a good person.  God knows they are an endangered species.

Maybe extinct.

I am currently writing about the shock and awe of ‘coming home’ to Vancouver after being feral for ten years.  ‘Course it is NOT home anymore for me and Sal.  It is yesterday’s home.  History, really.  The shock and awe we feel comes mostly from the fact that it is not the way I remembered it.  Not even the way I experienced it during those somewhat regular but still infrequent visits over the years.  Back then I went from the ferry to see friends – do a little shopping or something – and then back to the ferry.  I did not spend a lot of time in West Vancouver, the North Shore or Downtown.  And that is where the biggest surprises were!

Soon we will go further afield and I suspect to be just as surprised by what has changed out there, too.

Well, these are not really BIG surprises, I guess.  We have spent some time in Hong Kong, after all.  We have seen the proliferation of high-rises and shopping venues gone insane before.  And we have been in enough cities around the world to know even heavier traffic, crowded stores and sidewalks and madding crowds to extreme saturation levels.  Been there.

I guess the real issue is…..kinda……that I didn’t expect Vancouver to ‘be there’.  Not yet.  Not so quickly, anyway.

It feels as if the Vancouver skyline has doubled and the streetscape has thickened.  It feels as if Vancouver traffic has tripled (at the very least) and it feels as if, somehow, time has been altered.  Like I was Rip Van Winkled or something.  It is a strange feeling for me.  I am a bit out of sync I think.

Don’t get me wrong.  I can still drive.  I can get from A to B.  I know where New Westminster is.  I can find ‘ways’ through traffic and locate favourite haunts (those that still exist) and the basic landmarks of yesterday are still there.  But the tempo, the heartbeat, the pace.  It’s different.  It’s almost foreign…getting oddly Toronto-ish.

It is hard to describe it, actually.  My hometown is starting to feel foreign to me.  I don’t belong here anymore.  My ‘center’ has shifted.  And, weirdly, as comfortable as I am in our new home up the coast, that house has not quite become the new ‘center’.  Not yet anyway.  It is definitely home but I know that it is a remote home, a distant place, a bit more home-base more than a home-home.  If you know what I mean…….?

I guess we are still in transition.  After ten years.  Who would have guessed?

To be fair, our adjustment to being out there and our adjustment to returning for a month or so is much the same kind of ‘change-adaption-process’ and so a little confusion or disorientation is to be expected, I guess.  It is just that this is my old stomping ground. I mistakenly expected the same and I got different.

New Guineans have had it much, much harder.  Seventy five years ago they were naked bush people with bones in their noses and marvelling at great silver birds in the sky.  Today some of them are airline pilots and software engineers.  They all have smartphones and TV.  They don’t hunt.  They don’t try to kill the strangers.  They buy Nike.

THAT is shock and awe.  Us?  We are just a little slow to catch on, I guess.

An accident on the North Shore (tragic, actually) closed the Lions Gate bridge today.  It was morning rush hour and we were ensnared along with thousands of others.  Tens of thousands.  We managed to join the madding crawl to the 2nd Narrows bridge and arrived at our appointment in town 2.5 hours after we left home.  With no traffic (that never happens anymore, we are told) it would have taken 30 minutes.  Tops.  We had allowed an hour……just in case.  It wasn‘t enough.

Distance-as-the-raven flies?  Maybe 6 miles.

I am not complaining.  The poor sods who suffered from the accident had it very bad and we were just ever-so-slightly inconvenienced and the doctor we were scheduled to see had also been trapped on the wrong side. No big deal for us or him.  Not really.

So, what is the point? (the point is Moo)

Today’s incident stood in such stark contrast to our normal ‘commute’.  That is the point.

We live on a remote island, fer Gawd’s sake!!  And yet, in 2.5 hours I can go to our nearest shopping district and do a complete two-or-three store shop.  (OK, we can’t get back in that time but 2.5 hours is most of the job done, anyway.)

My time is taken up with riding in boats, traveling logging roads, schlepping totes and a short 15 minute ferry ride (usually much less than a half-hour wait).  It is rarely spent in line-ups.  And it is NOT ever stuck in traffic!  I don’t have crowds, jams, accidents or construction delays of more than a few seconds….OK, a minute….maybe a pod of Orcas now and then to distract me…that is about it.

Even in town (albeit a small town) one never has to stay stopped in traffic at any particular light for more than one change and, to be fair, there are only a half-dozen controlled intersections to deal with as a rule anyway.

On a good day – in the Big Smoke – I can make it through 1 mile of downtown in 15 to 20 minutes.  On a bad day……well, see first paragraph.

I forgot how insane that is.

But I am being reminded.  Every day.

If all goes well, we are given say, 80 years on the planet and 1/3 of that is spent sleeping.  Another good portion is spent eating, pooping and showering. And shaving.  Another third is spent working or in school.  God knows the balance of what is left is mostly inane conversation, TV, shopping and other assorted colossal wastes of time (like reading this blog!).  So I really don’t think spending any time in traffic, queuing in line-ups and/or waiting on others is the way I want to spend any more time at all.  And a traffic jam is amongst the worst places to waste time I can think of (airports are the worst!).

I admit that this blog verges on the edge of another rant and that is also not the point.  The point is that we are being herded and corralled and controlled and Orwelled in the city to such a huge extent that it is literally wasting our life.  And I can no longer see the point of that.  Not a bit.  Maybe a short time for young people to access the gene pool but there is not enough money to warrant a longer duration.

But young people don’t know that.

This new perspective may be an age thing.  Probably is.  But, honestly……..how can we allow our life-force to slip away like that?

I did, tho.  I did.  Till I was 55!!  How mad is that!?

And speaking of Mad Cow, I watched a beautiful young woman walk her new baby-in-a-pram along a busy road.  She was dressed like a model in leathers and fluff and high heels and gobs of makeup.  Traffic roared around her.  Buildings loomed everywhere.  It was bedlam-in-grey concrete Hell.  But she was so pleased with herself.  Justifiably.  She had made a cute kid and was strutting her stuff.  She had scored in the gene pool.  God bless her.

But I suspect that she and her husband will now work like dogs to pay off a bazillion dollar mortgage………………………

And all I saw was just another head of cattle and her calf…………  

Second hand.  Not a big thing.  Small, actually.  Dinko.  But it will do the job.  I think.

I am going to purchase more solar panels and that plan – when executed – will require a new frame and post setup for the whole panel assembly.  The cost of the welder is 25% of what I would pay a guy to do that for me, so I’ll just do it myself.

Oooh….shades of macho, independent-man, eh?

‘Course I have managed to damage myself in every new independence undertaking so far – especially the macho ones – so Sally is not all that pleased with this new acquisition.  “You are goin’ to kill yourself, you old fool.  At least electrocute or burn yourself – probably both!  And the frame will fall apart and all our panels will be destroyed.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the nurturer here?  You know, supportive?  Whatever happened to the woman behind the man, eh?”

“Oh, I’ll be behind you, alright.  With a fire extinguisher.  And a first aid kit.  You loon!”

“Good.  I knew I could count on you.  Now, would you just hold this electrode-thingy while I turn it on?”

Sal is pretty good as a rule.  Great, actually.  But she doesn’t always get onside right away.  In fact, she never gets onside right away.  She claims the reason for that is a strong survival instinct.  But I usually get past that.  Eventually.   OK….not always……

Fortunately for me, I am charming.  And usually right.  OK…to be more honest…..I just don’t listen to her and just charge ahead anyway (sometimes) but I think of that as part of my charm so it is much the same thing.  And – if it works out – she is pretty gracious and doesn’t try to take credit for it.  Not all the time anyway.

I can hear it now……  “It was me who suggested you buy that welder!” 

If it doesn’t work out, she usually keeps her mouth shut.  Which is pretty good.  I’d be going ‘nyah, nyah’ myself.  So I consider that part supportive.  Not nurturing so much but supportive in a quiet, pretend-it-didn’t-turn-out-well kind of way.   The reason for that…?  She sorta figures that my ego is already too big and acknowledging my being right will only make things worse.  And, if my ego gets too big, I am gonna hurt myself. Which I have done.  Many times.  Ergo, for safety reasons, she has to play down the victories.  And I get that.  She’s probably right.

God help us all if this welding thing works out.

We’re in Victoria for Sal’s father’s 90th birthday.  Which coincided with my son’s engagement party two nights before.  So we are doing ‘family’ this weekend.  Life’s a whirlwind, eh?

And when I say ‘doing family’, I mean that we are engaging more fully with my son’s fiance’s family and in a similar manner as we did when my daughter got married two weeks ago and we met his family.  We are getting to know the ‘other side’.  We are meeting and engaging with – even hugging and smiling a lot – with strangers.  Plus, this engagement exercise is more than just grinning and making small talk, it is truly an undertaking in getting to know people.  Fast.  They are going to be family after all.  Sheesh.

“What is the sister’s husband’s name again?”  

“Sam.”  

“Right.”  

“But her mother’s sister’s name and her husband’s?”  

“Not a clue.  Have we met them?”  

“No.  I don’t think so.  Oh God!  What if we have?  What if they look familiar?”  

“We do what we always do……we say, ‘yo dawg!”

“No wonder we have a reputation for being weird!” 

It is a brave new world.  People travel.  People meet.  And people marry.  But when more people travel than they used to, more people are going to meet and marry others from distant places.  Consequently, families from apart will have to get to know one another and they are going to have to do that in strange new ways.  No one marries the girl next door anymore.

B is from Toronto.  He married my daughter (Vancouver).  Families had to travel to make that happen.  Thus the wedding that was held in Mexico two weeks ago (yes, I know the logic of it doesn’t entirely explain Mexico but it worked out perfectly so it must be there in some way).  My son’s betrothed is from Victoria as was my wife, Sally.  So that part is somewhat more conventional.  But still NOT the girls next door.

Anyway…this blog is about the idea of family.  And how odd the whole thing is.  Really.  When you think about it.  Family is not about the people you know – as you thought for the longest time.  It is, later in life, about meeting people you DON’T KNOW!  There you are, minding your own business, ignoring your grown children to the best of your ability while hiding out in the forest and then WHAM!  All of a sudden you are enmeshed in an intricate and somewhat intimate web of mingling with strangers who will become part of your family.

That is weird.  Don’t you think?    

There is some kind of irony here….I am now selling rock!

Well, NOT my rock.  Not home!  But the place I am staying at has 15-20 pallets of cut granite (the kind of stone that is used to build rock walls in fancy neighbourhoods).  Since I am here some of the time, my friend has said, “If anyone comes by and wants a good deal on stone, sell it to them.  We have too much.”

So, I am getting into the Craigslist business despite what I said yesterday, I guess.  At least I didn’t have to find the rock in an alley.  I suppose I can sell rock.  Well, for as long as I have the rock sprinkled about the place on pallets, I guess.  At least I’ll help out should someone come by.

Granite cut-rock in blocks like this runs somewhere between 25 and 40 cents a pound!!!  A pallet of 2 tons could retail for over $1000.  I can sell it for ten cents a pound.

And there is a helluva lot of beautiful, used-but-perfect Cedar t&g here, too.  Cheap.  Some of which may end up on the island…..

I dunno….capitalism, eh?…. “…..just when I thought I was out, they dragged me back in…..” (which was a line from the Godfather and applies to the Mafia but it is all much the same thing.)

We were laughing over breakfast, “Geez, old habits, eh?  I can’t get over the fact that I can use all the tomatoes if I want to because we can easily get some more tomorrow.  Normally, I would conserve – try to get two meals out of it.”

“Hey!  I am turning out the lights all the time!  How weird is that?  20,000 sft of building with tools and machines and lights everywhere running all the time and someone else paying for it and I still can’t help myself…I conserve….”

“But that is good, right?  Aren’t we just being good?”

“I guess….but it kinda feels like a drop in the ocean.  One thing is for sure – we have developed some good habits for ourselves and for living off the grid.  So, that is good.  But down here?  I dunno…..feels pointless, really.”

“So, wanna go shopping?”

“Yeah, sure.  Mind if I troll a few alleys on the way?”