Catchy Name Needed

I have become something of an expert on cough drops in the last few weeks. Basically, I don't think I'd've been able to survive without them. It is amazingly hard to find the same cough drops at different stores; they seem to all have a little different selection. After three weeks of sucking on the damn things, I have a clear favorite: Halls Sugar Free Assorted Mint Flavors. (Which I have only been able to find at Walgreen's and Krogers.) My back-ups are Ricola Lemon-Mint, which you can find most places, or CVS's house-brand mint - which have the advantage of being extremely cheap (99 cents for a very large bag), and taste pretty similar to Halls. I find that I really, really prefer the sugar-free ones, though. When you've got one of the sugary ones in your mouth all day for days on end, eventually you start feeling like your teeth are going to fall out.

I am not a person who normally shops at drugstores, for some reason. They built a new competing-CVS-and-Walgreens duo on opposite corners of a main intersection here a year or two ago, and I had been in the Walgreen's exactly once and the CVS not at all, up until last week. But it is much easier to run in there after cough drops than to run into a grocery store or Wal-Mart. (For that matter, there is no "running in" to either of those places. There is just no getting in & out quickly whatsoever.)

Hmm, you know, I complain about the big stores, but I am also not a person who shops at convenience stores. I can't even tell you the last time I went in one. Probably the only time I ever go inside one, actually, is when I'm getting gas and can't pay outside for one reason or another. I seriously avoid going inside, I think, although it's not something I give much thought to. I dislike buying gas at all, for one thing, but since I have to do it I very much prefer to pay at the pump and get out of there. I was an early and enthusiastic adopter of pay-at-the-pump, actually; when it first surfaced and was only at a few places, I would go miles out of my way for it.

I'm trying to think why I got that way about it. Years and years ago, when I was first driving, nothing had gotten automated yet and you didn't have much choice about going inside - unless you were willing to pay a lot more to have somebody else pump your gas and bring your credit card slip outside to sign, you had to. But they used to let you pump before you paid, and I think part of my dislike of the whole thing comes from that two-part process they came up with for security reasons, where you had to go take your money or your credit card inside before you pumped, and then go in again if you had change, or to sign your receipt. (And I guess if you don't do pay-at-the-pump, you still have to do that, don't you?)

And then the other part of it is that I am basically and intrinsically cheap, and can't stand paying convenience store prices for things. I guess that comes from not ever having much money most of my life.