Sheesh. I'm gone 10 days and there has been a revolution at the Sav-a-Center (subsidiary of A&P)! I head in there yesterday to buy nice, carb-free stuff to get me back on track and there are no more plastic bags. Yep, at least one corner of New Orleans--never, ever, ever one to be ahead of any trend in the world--has gone back to paper grocery bags. Who do they think they are? San Francisco?

Anyway, if you hear of more murders than usual in New Orleans anytime soon--although, the murder rate's already so high, how would you know--it's the Sav-a-Center checkout clerks, killing their store managers. I've never seen such unhappy employees in any store, which is saying a lot here, where surly service is the norm. They were practically wrestling to get the bags open and filled.

For me, it's all good. Not only is it environmentally sound, but it's more exercise. I can carry a ton of those plastic bags--in fact, had developed quite the system of looping them all up the length of my arm so as to make the fewest trips possible from the car up the stairs into my house. How lazy is that? No more. It took eight trips up the steps carrying paper bags. So I can consider it exercise, right?

We'll see if I still think it's a good thing in August when it's 100 degrees with 100% humidity.