Val Is CENTSing a Jab From the Universe This Week

There are coincidences, and then there are coincidences.

As you know, I was planning a visit with The Pony earlier this week. That means the making of Chex Mix and an Oreo Cake. I budgeted my time carefully, for maximum efficiency and freshness. I put off baking that cake until Monday, which left the Chex Mix preparation on Sunday. I had purchased my ingredients a week in advance. All systems were GO.

Of course I also planned my efforts around my daily 44 oz Diet Coke. Nobody wants to park their magical elixir in FRIG II for 2.5 hours while stirring Chex Mix every 15 minutes. A 44 oz Diet Coke is sipped leisurely in the dark basement lair, not gulped for rehydration with your head in the oven.

I even told Hick to make sure I was up by 9:00 on Sunday, the plan being to have that Chex Mix done, shower, and leave for town (and my magical elixir) by noon. I set out my pans, layered all the ingredients, and was ready to pour on the Worcestershire Sauce, oil, garlic powder, and garlic salt at 9:25. Yep, I was cooking with gas, people, my electric oven already pre-heated to 250 degrees.

I went to the cabinets for my final four ingredients. WAIT A MINUTE! That can't be right! I had a new bottle of vegetable oil, new shakers of garlic powder and garlic salt, but ONLY 1/3 OF A BOTTLE OF WORCESTERSHIRE! Of course I checked the pantry. Where I found a plethora of BBQ sauce, salad dressing, Heinz 57, steak sauce, mustard, and ketchup...none of which are ingredients of Chex Mix. Not an extra bottle of Worcestershire Sauce anywhere!

Well. That threw a monkey wrench into my best-laid plans. There was nothing I could do but turn off the oven, jump in the shower, and drive to town for Worcestershire Sauce. You can't make Chex Mix without it!

At Save A Lot, the whole front row of parking was taken. So I had to drive around to the row facing those spaces. I hate it when that happens. I parked T-Hoe and dashed inside, snagging three bottles Worcestershire Sauce, paying with my debit card. Which was kind of embarrassing, since it only cost three dollars and change. Still, it was better than breaking a twenty.

I came out swinging my bag of Worcestershire, heading for T-Hoe's rear, and I SAW IT!

A penny waiting just for me, in the empty space beside T-Hoe. So hard was that penny to see from the other direction, I almost lost it. I had to go back to T-Hoe's front bumper and look again, waiting for the glare.

Face down it was, as most of my pennies are wont to be. But you're not gonna believe this! When I got that penny home, and checked with my magnificent magnifying glass...I discovered it was a 1998. That's the year The Pony was born. So let's backtrack. I was making Chex Mix for The Pony, discovered I was out of Worcestershire, and had to make an unscheduled emergency trip to town before I could continue. Putting me in town a couple hours before I was planning to go, at a store I didn't plan to visit, in a parking space I never park in. I'm pretty sure The Universe was snickering.
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MONDAY, August 6th, I had to go shopping for a new laptop. Hick, who's cutting into my scratcher action, had won $15 on a ticket he bought himself, and asked me to cash it in and get him three more of that kind. From three different stores. Which put me at the Original Waterside Mart.

I glanced down and spied a dime! This was a 2002, face up.

Poor Hick. He won nothing on any of his three tickets. But I won $15 on a different one I bought myself there. PLUS I found a free dime!
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Whoa, Nelly! Hold those presses again! Of course I found MORE pennies on my SATURDAY, Aug. 11, trip to town. Thus negating all the hard work that went into getting this tale ready to publish automatically. Uh huh. Set for 3:37, and I found more pennies at 1:27 and 1:28. I know, right? Future Pennyillionaire problems!

Both were in the Backroads Casey's.

This one I spotted on the mat as I walked in, but since no customers were waiting at the counter, I went ahead and handed a trainee my scratcher winners to cash in. Then I got my pic to prove it happened.

Hard to tell from this view, but it was FACE UP, a 2012. Would you believe I maneuvered my phone 7 ways to Sunday to get THIS photo? The sunlit day wreaked havoc with my penny-picture.

While I was waiting for the trainee to learn how to scan the winners, I noticed something out of my straight-down peripheral vision.

Please excuse the intruding toe and shirt-tail of Val.

It was a face-down 1982.

Whew! I hate cutting my publishing time so close. Oh, wait! There's no Law of Blogging that says I have to put something out by a specific time. It's just that giving myself a deadline gives me a sense of having an ersatz schedule during my retirement years. If this had published itself before I added the last two, it's not like I'd been struck by lightning. Those are the kind of odds that happen on a trip to Oklahoma to visit The Pony.
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For 2018: Pennies  # 79, 80.
For 2018: Dimes  # 13.
For 2018: Nickels still at # 4.

Since 2017 (the beginning), this was Penny # 157, 158.
Since 2017 (the beginning), this was Dime # 19.
Since 2017 (the beginning), this is still Nickel # 4.
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