I finally got in contact with Dave, the facilities guy, regarding my lost Tron figure. He made it sound like he had some sort of grabbing or reaching device I could borrow, and that got my hopes up.

He had a broom.

Had I known I was waiting for the opportunity to borrow a broom, I probably would have continued my pen-taping efforts. But I didn’t, so I didn’t.

The broom worked pretty well. I taped a couple of paper clips to the end to form a reasonably stable hook and after a couple minutes of fishing, I was set to go. I fished the figure out of the depths and it emerged wearing a small coat made out of dust bunny fur. Apparently it had been down there longer than I realized.

The Tron populace reunited, I moved them to a more secure location where they won’t fall back behind there. Should that happen, I will probably make the suggested trip to Home Depot to fashion a more stable fishing mechanism.

In other news, the weekend came and went uneventfully. I bought Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby at the local Wherehouse and am reasonably pleased with the purchase. I am trying to conserve funds now that I’ve gotten my Visa bills from the holiday season, so I admit to having my fair share of buyer’s remorse over the $8 purchase. I’m enjoying the music, though, so I can’t be too hard on myself.

Speaking of buyer’s remorse, Jenn and I went to the new Whole Foods store in downtown Portland and both of us were quite impressed. They offer a wide array of very interesting and uncommon foods there that were fun to look at, though the pricing on them made it unreasonable to shop there on a regular basis. In order to get our parking validated we had to buy something, so I bought a jar of mango salsa and a macadamia nut candy bar. The candy bar, we knew, was $2, but it was something new to try so we ignored the ridiculous cost for an item probably 2”x1”x1” in size. The mango salsa was another story.

We tried a sample of the stuff and fell in love with it so we had to pick up a jar… but there was no price on it. I’m normally smart enough to know the “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it” rule, but I was blinded by flavor. (Figure that one out!) At checkout, I found the jar of salsa cost me $6! Holy shit!

So we left the store with our candy bar and our salsa, $8 lighter but with validated parking. All in all, a rather successful trip. I still can’t believe it was $6 for that salsa, though.