Costco Visit

When I was living by myself post-divorce, I would go to Costco a lot. Instead of buying carloads of stuff, I would go almost weekly after work and get a few items each time. Stuff like frozen food, snacks, and sometimes toilet paper. I was also driving a Nissan 350Z so I couldn’t carry much anyway.

After moving in with my parents, they do most of the shopping so my Costco visits dropped to probably a few times a year. Usually I go once to get something special, like the Google mesh Wifi package, then I would have to go again to use the rebate credit. Otherwise, I would tell my parents what I wanted and they would get it.

Lately, my mom has been complaining that I don’t eat enough vegetables so I went to check out Costco’s pre-packaged salad selection. Since costco.com didn’t have fresh food available, I need to go look at the ingredient list in person. I ended up getting two types of salad plus a pre-made sandwich/salad combo.

There are two Costcos pretty close to me. We went to the larger one in The District; not sure if that’s in Irvine or Tustin. It was about 5:00 pm on a Monday and it was crowded. Not as crowded as pre-COVID days, but much more crowded than what I expected. Everyone was wearing a mask, though it was tough to keep a six-foot bubble around you. Checkout was a madhouse so we went to the self checkout line. I haven’t seen that before. I also bought some pre-cooked entrees (Beef Stroganoff) and some dessert. What I really wanted was a Costco hot dog but my nutritionist said those were high in phosphates and I didn’t want to mess up my monthly labs tomorrow.

It was hard not to “window shop” at Costco since I could justify buying so many things. I could probably spend 30 minutes just in the TV section, even though we already have 5 LCD TV’s from Costco. The trick is to have a list of items you need to buy, and have tunnel vision so you are not distracted by all the product displays and sample ladies.