Monday, February 1, 2010

oh the exciting life i lead.



So, working in retail for this amount of time has been a very interesting experience. It has also been the longest I've had a job! go me.

Anyway, in the past 3-4 years, I haven't been in Texas for longer than 3 weeks. Now that I've been here for 5 months and talk to hundreds of people a day, I've noticed quite a few things I hadn't noticed before. Here are just a couple:

Besides the obvious Southern drawl and slang found in every-day communications, I've noticed a ton of people call a shopping cart a "Buggy." This is new to me. I've never in my life heard it called a buggy... I thought buggies were old baby strollers... Anyone else encounter/call it this?

The other is the number of people who belong to the Johnson Space Center Credit Union. I see a LOT of credit cards, and I was really surprised to see that JSC far outweighs the other banks and southwest credit cards. I guess this makes sense because I live like 10 minutes away from NASA, but still, NASA employs THAT MANY people?! crazy.

Also, working at the Hob Lob has allowed me to become an avid coin collector. I have only four more of the state quarters to collect, and three of the US Territories. According to my dad the DC and US Territories quarters are pretty collectible because the US mint never announced that they were going to make them and very few were actually made. I have District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and I am on the lookout for American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. I have also found so many wheat-back pennies. Among others I have a 1919 penny (the year my grandma was born), and a 1911 penny!

Due to my recent enjoyment of coin collecting, I decided to pull out this old box I have with my name written in my grandmother's handwriting. It is filled with all kinds of goodies from her travels to Europe and Africa in the 60s, and I pull it out every once in a while to look through all of the little treasures. I had forgotten about all of the stuff in there! Among postcards, slides, really rough toilet paper and old bills from Germany, Italy (Pre-Euro), England and Norway I found some $3 bills from the Republic of Texas and a few $100 Confederate States of America bills. Given they are authentic, in pretty good condition, and earn 2 cents interest every day, they are worth about $500! Thanks Granny! I don't know if they are authentic or not, since most of the bills in that time were hand-written, so I am anxiously awaiting to see if I receive tickets to the Antiques Roadshow in Biloxi, MS. Wish me luck!

2 comments:

cinr said...

I totally became a coin collector last year while working at PJ's. I think I collected all 50 states in two months, it was kind of ridiculous how obsessed I got. My co-workers worried, and then they helped me.

Kathryn said...

Oh my goodness Jena! So I don't know why I hadn't read this post before, but when I went to staff training I met a girl, Stephanie, who was from South Carolina and she called a shopping cart a buggy!!!!! HAHA!!!!! Thought you would like that :) Love and miss u Jena!