Thoughts for food

Okay, new ground rules. No more cooking huge meals for ten when there's
only one of me living in the apartment. It's not as though the supermarkets make it easy
-- just try buying a single person's share of chicken, ground beef, or milk -- but I should
have known better when I decided to make a meatloaf.
It's not as though it was a bad meatloaf. Of course, it wasn't a particularly good meatloaf
either -- it looked good, but it sort of fell apart as soon as you poked at it, like one of Bush's
policies. The problem is that I've been eating it for two meals a day since Tuesday, and I'm
pretty sure I never want to see another one for as long as I live.
I'm researching a story on an island not far from my home. I took a call from a woman
this morning who claimed to know all kinds of things about it -- she's a real estate agent and
a member of the local historical society, so I figured she might know what she was talking
about. I should've known what I was getting into when she began giving me directions
to her office.
"Okay, you get to an intersection, and you see a road to the right."
"Road to the right," I repeat, frantically scribbling the words down.
"You don't want to take that one; it's the wrong road. Now, on the other side of the
intersection is the road you want to take."
"Other side of the intersection. Got it," I say, crossing out the previous lines and writing
the new directions into my notebook.
"But you can't go that way because of the construction. You need to come all the way
from the other side of town..."
The interview went more or less the same way. She'd start off telling me something
really interesting, like the fact that the island was named after the first mate of the
Mayflower, and then launch into a story about some friends of hers who all got together for
a big party at a house THAT WAS NOWHERE NEAR THE ISLAND IN QUESTION.
I was also able to look at several packages of photographs that she showed me. I
explained to her that we wouldn't be able to use any of the photos with my story, because
a). they were seven years old and b). had nothing to do with what I was writing about.
Still, she was nice enough, which you don't often find on these interviews. She also
gave me some good information -- eventually -- and some food for thought: someday,
I may actually want to purchase a house of my own, and then I might have to spend time
with people like her on a regular basis.
Of course, I could go back to the strategy of asking a roommate to go through the hassle
of negotiating with landlords, banks, and the rest. I'm not sure I'm ready to have a roommate
again, though, even though it would mean there'd be someone else around to eat my
meatloaf.