Bill and I just got back from Costco.....again.....third time this week. We don't smoke anymore. We don't drink. We don't do drugs. We don't have sex anymore. (Well...) We have almost cut out eating candy entirely. But....we go to Costco. All the time. Our personal crack. We will be sitting in our chairs, busy on our lappys, when one of us will say that magic word. "COSTCO? Do we need anything?" The other answers before the question is finished. "Sure! Ok! Yeah I think I need eggs, or milk or something. I will think of it on the way over."

Just that word COSTCO makes us a little happier, our heart beat a little faster and it gets me dressed in an otherwise slothful lazy day. Visions of long aisles of "stuff", tables of books, coolers of yummy food dance in my head. And then the vision turns into hotdogs, chicken strips, poutine, pop, hamburgers, lattes.......mmmmmmmmm. I'm in!!!

Pretty much everywhere we go in North America and Hawaii we run into Costcos. Actually, we don't exactly run into them. We hunt for them. "Its a cultural trip" we tell ourselves. Every region has region specific items in their Costco. We learn about the area by going to these different stores. I have a GPS with "COSTCO" as the number one preset button.

In Hawaii, they sell beach towels, beach chairs, beach toys, thongs, bathing suits, booze, banana bread, pineapples, macaroni and potato salad (Mixed together), raw salmon salad, poi, purple bread, fireworks, guns, size 12X Hawaiian shirts, chocolate covered macadamia nuts, mega major truck accessories. We choose to stay in condos as opposed to hotels. That way we have to go to costco to buy our food.

We were travelling through the states last year. As usual we were stopping at all the costcos we could find. In the midwest we ran out of water which, of course, necessitated a trip to the nearest Costco. I pushed the preset button on Garmin and found that we had passed one fifteen miles back. The next one was 78 miles ahead. We turned around. To this day I regret I didn't take a picture of the huge sign posted right by the entrance. It read "NO GUNS ALLOWED". Inside this particular costco we found saddles, horseshoes, ropes, saddle soap, fence posts, mini tractors, barbed wire, electric fences, screen doors, gum boots, shit shovels, chicken feeders, nipple buckets, small animal traps, big animal traps, assorted farm equipment, and definitely no sushi.

A few years ago we were on one of our trips to Saskatchewan, south through the states and back up the coast to home. This particular trip happened fairly late fall. On the way to Regina we flattened a tire (Im not telling how that happened) We put the spare on and decided to stop at Costco in Regina and get the tire fixed. It was evident the moment we entered the place that we were in what would become an extremely cold climate. Up front and centre we saw snow shovels, ice scrapers, huge bags of salt, mini hand held snow blowers, anti freeze, snow bank fencing, survival suits, fur hats and mitts, ice augers, ice pick axes, car tire chains, moon boots, snow suits, block heaters, survival kits, tiger torches, anti salt damaging coating stuff. I told Bill we had better get out of Dodge before the winter set in!

But we still get caught now and then. The other day Bill and I went down to Canadian tire and bought rope lights for outside. I scoped out a wee prelit Xmas tree. The four foot tree was 199 bucks. Crap!! Today we stopped at McD's for a free coffee. McD's is right beside Canadian Tire. I told Bill I was going to buy that tree. I want a prelit one. He suddenly remembered...they have them at Costco!! My heart started to beat a little faster. I got a little happier! Off we went. I made a beeline for the xmas trees and there it was. Seven (not four) feet tall, slim, covered with a million little lites, already decked out with pine cones and berries. And... it was 139 dollars!!! OMG!! I almost bought a piece of crap from Canadian Tire. And Bill noticed that they have three times longer rope lites for half what he paid at Canadian Tire. We just looked at each other and shook our heads in shame. "Jeez!" Bill said, "We HAVE to remember to check Costco out before we buy stuff." I just sadly nodded my head.