CONSTRUCTION, CONSTRUCTION... WHAT'S YOUR FUNCTION?

I'm sure regular readers of this log (thanks, Mom!) have been waiting with bated breath to hear the fate of the mysterious midnight construction at our friendly neighborhood grocery store last week. The work site itself was apparently a pretty impressive sight -- a neighbor told us it was noisy as hell, and when we drove by the store the night the work was being done, there were these ominous giant crates sitting in the parking lot. Were they full of groceries.. or pod people? You be the judge.

So a few days later, I walk in, eagerly anticipating an entirely new, but still freakishly odd, grocery store. Boy, was I in for a surprise. A casual walk around the store revealed... well, nothing. Nothing, that is, until I wandered into the store’s notorious produce section -- so frequently stocked with rotting fruit that even employees fear to wander its aisles. I once heard two checkers getting into a fight over whose turn it was to do produce duty, but that’s another story for another day.

But I digress. It turned out that they replaced all the metal, vaguely communist-looking stands upon which they place the aforementioned rotting fruit with these newfangled plastic stands (with fake, unpainted wood grain -- classy!) As a side effect, they apparently threw away all the old fruit because everything looked relatively edible.

However. The changes I saw don't reflect the size and scope of the machinery I saw in front of the store on Tuesday night, nor the loud noises our neighbors reported. So I suspect something more nefarious is afoot. Maybe they dug an underground tunnel to a nearby store from a competing chain. That would certainly explain the assortment of suspiciously fresh fruit. Or maybe it has something to do with the odd connection to the Canadian military (which I’m still not prepared to discuss publicly in this space, out of fear for the well-being of my loved ones).

More frightening yet, I was back the other night, and I heard an announcement over the PA that made my heart stop. The store was closing early for... more construction.

The plot thickens.