subject: Do Your Grocery Shopping with Satellite Internet [print this page] Do Your Grocery Shopping with Satellite Internet
There are a few people out there who genuinely enjoy grocery shopping. They find it relaxing to push a big cart through the aisles of food, feeling for ripe honey dew melon, finding that the season's best cherries are on sale, or discovering an obscure new spice in the ethnic foods aisle. They get so excited that they break out their phones, access satellite broadband, and look up recipes online while they're in the store, feeling inspired by the sight of new ingredients and the aromas of food all around them.
But for most, grocery shopping is a chore that is less than pleasant. It often begins with driving to a crowded shopping center and circling the lot a few times just to find a parking spot. From there, you have to walk through a fluorescent-lit store with mind-numbing music, trying to summon your basic division skills to figure out which jar of strawberry jam is cheaper per ounce. Before you know it, you're remembering that John Updike story "A&P" that your read in college and starting to curse your existence.
The apples you were craving look mushy, the low-sodium soy sauce you needed has run out, and your kid is staging the battle of century over a box of highly processed, sugary "fruit" snacks, insisting that they are healthy because they are cherry-flavored. While all of this is going on, naturally your other kid knocks over a display stand of tortilla chips. "Great," you think. "Just what I need."
When you finally make it to the register, you find yourself fourth in line behind three very full carts. Then, just as you can taste your turn coming up, the woman in front of you ends up arguing over an expired coupon with the cashier. She then proceeds to pay the last $7 of her bill out of her coin purse.
One of your items does not scan, and you watch in agony as the 16-year-old clerk pages the manager for a price check. By the time you're rung up, you realize that you overshot your budget by a good 20%, again, despite actually managing to say no to the "fruit" snacks! When you finally get back to your car, you find that someone let a shopping cart ram right into the bumper.
For those who fall in the latter group, the conveniences provided by satellite Internet have made grocery shopping a bit more tolerable. First of all, you can use online grocery ordering services to avoid the situation all together. Services like Peapod allow you to choose your food online, and have it shipped directly to your house, often for a marginal fee. There are plenty of regional services, as well. You can ask your grocery store if they have an online ordering program that's accessible by satellite Internet. Or you can even go to a standard search engine and look up the words "grocery delivery" with the name of your city to see what your options are.
These services can be especially useful for those who are often pressed for time, and don't have the time or energy to dedicate a couple of hours a week to procuring food. Just logon to your account with your satellite broadband phone, choose what you'd like to eat, and go! Grocery deliver services also save time driving, as well, preventing more wear and tear on your car, in addition to gas money. So if there is a small delivery fee, that amount often ends up being saved elsewhere.
