Practice Makes Near Perfect

On the same weekend for 19 of the last 20 years, the Poobah has ventured into a San Diego Costco to provision Profligate, the Ha-Ha mothership. And each year members of the crew would take a stab at guessing the final total. The Poobah doesn’t want to brag, but this year he guessed $1,740, which you can see is a mere $5 from the total. Not bad. But you get better with practice.

What really wasn’t bad was Vonnie, a 20-year Costco vet, and her sidekick, a two-year vet, whose name we didn’t catch, who boxed all our goodies far better than any Costco team before. And that’s saying something. Boy, did their packing make our life easier.

Our provisioning cost of $1,745.75 for 12 people for two weeks is much lower than in previous years. We used to take most of the crew into Costco, and everybody went ‘off list’, throwing countless extras onto the carts. As a result, the totals used to be  $2,200-2,400 — and our having leftover food that lasted for months. Indeed, some lasted until we got back to California at the end of the season.

What nobody — ourselves included — seems to be able to accept is that there’s plenty of food in Mexico.