Even at it its lowest setting, my laptop’s screen blinds me; each time I check a word, the screen sends scorching pain through my head. I’m not sure what attacked me today, but after lunch, a headache began forming in the nether regions of my head. Well, I guess I do have an idea: the cold weather and lack of sleep. After spending the weekend in warm Newport Beach, I wasn’t prepared for Seattle’s terrible cold. I was underdressed and spent too much time outside today. When I combined that with a late evening yesterday, I created a monster, who decided to play handball in my head.

After returning home from work, I bundled myself under the covers and took a nap to try to fight off the cold and headache. I woke up fifteen minutes ago still in pain but resolute to write. I thought my nap would take me through the morning, but it hasn’t; at least it hasn’t yet. The light still hurts my head and I have little to write—luckily, that’s never stopped me before. I’ll type with my eyes mostly shut and see if I can crank out a few more paragraphs before calling it a night.

I purchased my Caesar salad dinner at PCC, my local supermarket. Before moving to Seattle, I disdained organic food, mocking it by saying that I preferred my food inorganic. While I still believe the organic food movement is silly—particularly how far Europe has taken it, where genetic food has become a bigger deal than organic food—there are some types of organic food that I’ve grown to prefer. The meat and fish in particular seems to taste better; although that might be the result of a higher quality of meat and fish instead of a difference in the chemicals that are used to raise the meat. PCC is located in the perfect location from my house. I can walk there or stop when I return home from work. Convenience and familiarity is all important. The only thing it doesn’t have is decent toiletries. Who wants to use recycled, gray toilet paper? And don’t get me started on the all-natural toothpaste.

What I do like about PCC is the yuppie setting. I’ve been planning the yuppification of my neighborhood, and it revolves around the PCC. I’m the first to admit that I prefer the type of stores that come with raising the scale of the neighborhood—well, most of that preference relates to the increase in real estate price, particularly the Castle’s real estate price. Where I live is overdo for such a transformation. The first step: open a few more coffee shops within walking distance. Many of the commercial properties in my neighborhood need to be torn down and replaced with yuppie shops. There are whole yuppie industries being ignored besides coffee.

Getting back to my salad, PCC packages small, ready-made salads in plastic globes. They usually offer a choice between Caesar, garden, or Greek. The garden and Greek salads are more expensive, since they sell the salad based on weight. I’ve purchased the Caesar salad in the past for a dollar forty. I was surprised when I bought it yesterday that the price went up to three fifty, around the same as the other types of salads. After opening it and eating half of it, I figured out how they did it. The salad itself isn’t terribly heavy. It consists of lettuce, croutons, and shredded cheese. To add to the weight, PCC added a lemon wedge to the salad. While I’m not against lemon in my Caesar salad, I am against the wedge when I pay by the weight. An experienced salad bar eater would know never to put a lemon wedge in a salad when paid by weight. Sure, if you paid by dish (such as in a Mongolian barbeque place), a lemon wedge is appropriate because of its size. It’s the same as salad dressing. Sure, it might taste better, but you’ll be paying through the nose for it.

All this babbling has helped clear my head a bit. I need more sleep, and I’m going to look for it now. Hopefully, when I wake up tomorrow, today will be nothing but a bad, salad-filled dream.