Thrift Shop

We went to a thrift (charity) shop today. S had been wanting to go for a long time, but we'd never got around to it. Anyway, today we went to Radio Shack (to swap S's cellphone for one with a battery that last more than 5 minutes) and two doors down was the Goodwill Donation Centre.

The shop was enormous, and had rows and rows of stuff. This is maybe the effect of living in an affluent area in a consumerist society, but with lots of poor people around to remind you to give stuff to people. Clothes were sorted by type and colour, but not by size, and there was no indication of size on them, so it was slightly arduous. I bought a collared t-shirt (tennis shirt? Is that what they are called) and a pair of shorts (Ralph Lauren). S bought some shoes, and not much else - I think there was too much choice.

Unlike charity shops that I'm familiar with, they sold electrical stuff. So we know where to come when we want a telly. I bought an electric grill as well. I have learnt that a grill to an American is something like a barbecue, that grills from beneath. A grill that grills from the top is a broiler. (It took me a few days to understand why our cooker didn't have a grill, until I looked it up on wikipedia.)

I had a plan to put the grill on the patio, and pretend it was a barbecue, but we used to empty the cat litter there, and I wasn't sure it was completely clean and nice. (It's hard to sweep up every last dreg - the edge of our balcony is above the people's below, so anything that goes over the edge has a good chance of landing on them /their stuff. I'm waiting for rain, but that hasn't happened yet.) So I did it in the kitchen and set the fire alarm off.

Poor D waited for a long time for his sweetcorn, and eventually gave up, it never really seemed to cook.