Coming Spring 2013

I really like that this area is experiencing growing and “progress” but I am really starting to hate these series of words:
1. Coming Soon
2. Coming Spring 2013.
How much “less” descriptive can they get?

“Coming Soon” for example is so open ended, it is not even funny. I should just leave that right there, but of course I will not. What is soon? For a child that is within the next few minutes. For a person like me, that is within a few weeks to a couple of months. To the establishments that are popping up around us, it is more like 4-6 months. That is not funny people. 

On the other hand, at least with “Coming Spring 2013” we have some sort of end point on the time frame. We know that by Summer, we will have something there to talk about. Still, this is very open ended because are we talking about a Texas Summer or are we talking about the non-Texas Summer? See where confusion creeps in?

Anyway, I am excited that I have an inside scoop on the “Coming Spring 2013” sign that is on the Sprouts Farmer’s Market sign that is going in 1.5 miles from here. I am excited. I know that sometime in the month of April that new grocery store will open up. I just have to patiently wait until April and then my impatience can start all over again. While they were kind enough to enlighten me and narrow down when this Spring they would open, they were not kind enough to completely dispel all curiosity and give me an exact grand opening date. So I still have a 30 day window here to question.

At any rate, there is a Whole Foods Market going in not too far from here as well. The original sign read, “Coming Soon.” Come on, it does not get any less informative. How does one get excited about something like that? This is an area where we have entire building establishments that are mostly empty and you want me to get excited about something else being built to potentially sit empty? Now I know good and well that a grocery store in this great state is most likely to go in and become the hottest craze since sliced bread. Grocery store wars can be brutal down here. I hope that Sprouts is ready for that. I hope that Whole Foods is ready to put more than one card in the game with this little expansion they are doing. That all being said (which it is my opinion from years of experience), Whole Foods Market picked a great location to build their new store. It will be a nice change for the northwest side of town. Something we have not been privy to for so long. I just wished they would not have spiked attention without at least lowering the net a little so the ball would at least make it over. That was an unfair move on their part. Even going to their website has yielded fruitless. There is zero information about the store that is yet to materialize. Perhaps this soon opening deadline is further out than sooner?

Then this morning I was going through the stack of Sunday newspapers that had built up. I was pulling out all the coupon inserts before the newspapers hit the recycling bin. I just happened to glance at last Sunday’s paper and it was the front page of the Jobs Section. It was the headline that caught my eye. It was yet another grocery store chain, Aldi, opening up stores in Texas and ultimately the Houston area. Of course that drove more curiosity. I went to look online and see if any of the stores are near me. That would be a “not exactly” but they are not so far away that I would not go check them out for a “grand opening” trial run. The problem is that the website is less than informative or less than clear on the “opening” dates. The store that appears to be closest to me is listed as “Coming Spring 2013.” I can live with that. It appears to be up off of 2920 near where the H-E-B is where Spring Cypress and 2920 meet going toward I-45. It is not exactly close, but it is not exactly far. So sometime between now and perhaps May they would be doing a grand opening? Who knows. However, there were other Spring, Tx and Houston, Tx locations. I took a peek at those. Some of them were in areas I would not frequent if I was paid. Sad, but true. The thing I noticed was that there were no statements on their locations indicating their “coming” dates. I could not distinguish if they were open or if they were yet to open. On one of them, it was down off of FM 1960 (aka Cypress Creek Parkway). I plugged it into Google Maps and put it on Street View and took a look around. Granted it could have been old pictures in the street view, but I did not see anything that was labeled Aldi. I might just have to take a drive down there and see if they really do exist yet. If not, then at least I will know roughly where the store will be at. Just so you know I am not exactly going out of my way, I might have to go down there to get something from a place not too far from there. It all works out.

Still the fact remains that once you’ve spiked the ball into my playing field, I want to play with it. Give me something to work with. When do I get to actually hit the ball back over the net? Right now I do not even get to touch the ball. It is not even remotely nice on their part. I feel like the person in the old Mervyn’s commercials, “Open. Open. Open.”