Supermarket Sweep

In spite of the ennui that is fashionable among people as fabulous and elegant as I, I must confess to a new obsession that has whipped me up into an unbecoming tizzy of excitement. I am in love with a game. So in love, in fact, that I want to play it every day, everywhere I go. I am endlessly inventive when it comes to playing this game, or derivatives of it. The game is Supermarket Sweep.

I first played it a few nights ago. My friends Lahn Jahn and NaeRae (two of my best friends from college), are in town visiting and attending SXSW festivals. Rather than go out to dinner, we decided to eat in. And rather than eat anything normal and mundane, Lahn Jahn proposed that we do what she and her boyfriend occasionally do: supermarket sweep. This is how it works: you decide the parameters (time spent shopping, cost, "ethnic" foods, etc), and say go. We chose time as our parameter. Each person had 15 minutes to buzz through the grocery store, pick up as many or as few items as they wanted, and then meet back at the registers. Whatever you've picked up is what's for dinner.

It rocked! We had sausages and cheese, grapes and apples, jam and bread, wine and olives, tomatoes and cucumbers, more wine... It was perfect. As my dear wonderful super awesome friends and I gathered around the coffee table, we snacked, we talked, we caught up on years gone by, and rehashed favorite memories. And we owed it all to Supermarket Sweep.

I ought to confess that part of my current obsession is due to my insane good luck with this game. Witness: we played a game of Party Sweep yesterday, and you won't believe how lucky I got. Lahn Jahn, our friend the Samurai Warrior, and I went to one of NaeRae's South By Southwest schmooze-fest parties, where we knew absolutely nobody. We were three random chicks surrounded by people who worked in "the industry," so I said, hey, let's supermarket sweep the party! We each got 20 minutes to run around and talk to strangers and then meet back at the bar to compare notes and see who met the coolest person. This was something of a personal challenge for each of us, all three being somewhat more to the shy side of things, but I was in a great mood, so I shamelessly browbeat my poor friends to go along with the idea. We clinked glasses, gulped our drinks down, and headed off into the party to see who would meet the most interesting guest.

Feeling my oats, I walked right up to a guy who had made his hair stand up in spikes all over the top of his head (how did he do it? Hair gel? Hairspray? Cement? Magic?). I figured, with hair like that, this guy's gotta have something going for him. Sure enough. He was a fire eater and magician, and he gave me a demo of some of his fire-eating tricks right there at the bar. I couldn't believe my luck; I'd knocked out a homer in the first inning. A fire eating magician? Beat that! And he had an iPhone, which, I'm not entirely sure, but I think it might mean he's cooler than me (and probably everybody else I know) by a factor of a million gajillion infinity squared. I cannot lose at this game.

In the interest of continuing my obsession, just this morning I decided to Supermarket Sweep the various clutters and messes in my house. I gave myself 15 minutes to see how many I could clean up. Want to know how many I knocked out? No you don't, cause the answer is ZERO. But I did freshen up my pedicure, which has to count for something.