All That and a Bag of Chips

When I chose the title for this post, I wondered what the origin of the saying "all that and a bag of chips" was and what it was supposed to mean. In my case, you'll soon see I'm being more literal about it than the common usage. An urban dictionary says that it means something is cool or that a woman is attractive. It also says the saying was popular in the 90s. I thought it was considerably older than that. I prefer to use sayings that pre-date my own birth (like "bee's knees"...one of Grandpa Simpson's favorites) but you have to work with what you've got.

Moving on to the point of this post, such as it is...

Last night I was feeling pretty down because of a series of unpleasant experiences (like people who don't normally yell at me yelling angrily at me on a few occasions) and some unwelcome surprises. I've been plagued as of late by even more time banditry than normal which has made me feel a bit used by people. All of this has been in conjunction with some new niggling health issues that have ramped up my stress level on a daily basis.

I was tired and lamenting my recent fate (exercising self-pity is one of my talents) and I told my husband that I wanted some nice surprises in my life for a change. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I'm more than overdue on a karmic level for someone showing up at my doorstep with an over-sized check for a million dollars.

This morning, I was playing Guild Wars when a stranger gave me a bottle of orange dye in the game because my character's "name was funny". This means nothing to people outside of the game but I will say that there are two commodities that are generally valued in the game. One is gold and the other is dye. This was a very nice unsolicited gift and a complete surprise. It has never happened before.

This afternoon, I had two students today and the second one has been one of my bigger time thieves by asking me to correct and proofread a college paper outside of my lesson time with her. While I'm happy to help her, as of late, the amount of patching up her papers need has increased. It's gone from polishing up her English to needing wholesale content re-writes that can consume hours if I do it (which I didn't). Today, this student bought me a bag of American barbecue potato chips. This happens to be my favorite chip and is nearly impossible to find in Japan. The Japanese have something they call "barbecue" chips but they don't taste like those in the U.S. Again, this was another complete surprise.

A bottle of virtual dye and a bag of chips are no million dollar check but it's a start. I guess that it's not so much what the surprises are but the fact that they are pleasant ones.