I even designed shopping lists heavy with items with one or another of Safeway’s layers of special prices, club discounts, and digital coupons, sometimes with overlapping discounts. And for a couple of weeks Safeway got it all right.

It felt as if the whole system had been quietly upgraded, or perhaps supervisors suddenly started paying attention to their jobs, or maybe they tinkered with the software to reduce the error rate.

If I were really paranoid, I might think that they cleared my personal account to make sure it comes out right, but that’s pretty far fetched. More likely that the bad PR spurred some management-level changes.

Whatever the cause, though, things appeared to have been improved.

Then came our Safeway stop late Thursday afternoon. I bought a few oranges with a special “deal match” price of 67 cents a pound, but they rang up at the regular $2.99 per pound. This resulted in being charged $8.10 instead of just $1.82.

As usual, though, Safeway’s peculiar point-of-sale computer system applies most of the discounts in a blur at the very end of the process, meaning that you usually don’t have an opportunity to catch errors until after you’ve been handed your receipt and are heading out the door.

At just before 5 p.m., the customer service desk was not staffed, and it took several announcements by cashiers and several minutes for a manager to arrive on the scene.

He was all business. In short order, I received a $6.58 refund of the overcharge ($6.28 plus the $.30 excise tax) plus with a $5 gift card. No fussing required, and no need for me to cite the store’s price guarantee. Of course, I’m now a known trouble maker, and I can’t say whether or not other shoppers are having the same experience when reporting pricing erros.

Meanwhile, it’s been over a month since my Hawaii Monitor column at Civil Beat highlighted Safeway’s price guarantee policy, and the column is still among CB’s top ten most popular items.

I would be interested in hearing from other Safeway shoppers. Have you noticed fewer price errors in the past several weeks? And if you’ve asked for a refund after being overcharged on something, did the store follow Safeway’s price policy? Note: the policy is that if you’re overcharged on something costing under $5, you should get it for free, and for an item costing over $5, you should pay the lowest price and get a $5 gift card.

Share your recent experience, please.

The bad news is that Silverman had a hypoglycemic episode while boarding at VCA during our trip last week. His glucose level dropped dangerously low. His insulin dose was adjusted downward substantially, and he was sent home with strict instructions to monitor his blood glucose closely.

So the new routine is that I feed Duke and Silverman, wait about an hour, then have to get a blood sample (you have to stick a sharp thingie into their ears to get a small droplet of blood), always exciting. Then, based on the results, I’m supposed to adjust their insulin doses.

Both have been relatively stable for a couple of years, to the point that I have only done sporadic monitoring since last summer. But now the amazing thing (and the very good news) is that both need a much smaller insulin dose than they had previously required. I’m still trying to get the proper level so that they aren’t jumping up and down, but they’re getting half or less of the prior doses.

It’s hard to say what this means in the long run. Right now, though, it gives some more hope for both of them.

–> Check out all of today’s Feline Friday photos!

It’s a letter from my mother to her sister, Marguerite, written late on the morning of December 7, 1941, my father’s 28th birthday, as machine gun fire could be heard overhead and puffs of smoke seen in the sky.

The paper is brittle, there’s some old termite damage, but this treasure survived.

I’ve transcribed it below. You can see the original letter here.

Dec. 7, 1941
11:30 a.m.

Dear Margot:

Something is brewing but we don’t exactly know what the score is. We were awakened by a telephone call from Ma this morning saying that Japanese planes were bombing Pearl Harbor. I had a big head from a party last night so didn’t talk very much. She told John the house was shaking like a leaf. We’ve been sitting here watching the shooting. I wish I were at Waipahu to see more of it. We have to be content with just watching the puffs from the shots.

Every 10 minutes an announcement is made over the radio for people to report for one thing or another. The latest report is total blackout tonight. We still don’t know whether this is real or not. Jimi was called for sea-scout duty early this morning. All ROTC students are getting their equipment. I guess they’ll patrol the streets. One funny thing happened today. We went out to the street to watch them haul cannons. The soldiers were throwing kisses to all the gals along the street.

Guess we’ll have to stay put today. We can’t use the telephone anymore & we can’t drive our cars, so here we are.

11:50 Well, there goes the radio. Station KGMB has been ordered off the air. Governor Poindexter is declaring a state of emergency on station KGU. There come the planes!! Oh, oh, and machine gun fire right above us. I’m getting jittery! Shucks, this letter won’t get to you anyway; might as well quit.