Pest-O

The snow obscured the lines on the road, and my left headlight turned off. All around me was darkness, except the glaring of neone signs from passing strip malls. Despite the weather, Evan and I were on a mission. We were in search of pine nuts.

"Why don't we just buy Pesto?" Evan had suggested when we couldn't find pine nuts in the produce aisle of Tops. We were in East Cleveland. I guess pine nuts are not in high demand. I don't know why. We have plenty of pine trees.

"I will not be defeated by the pesto! Let's look in the nut aisle." The Nut Aisle is really where I belonged.

It was 9:00 at night. Evan needed to study for an exam on Monday. We had 21 hours left until the Steelers slammed Seattle in the Superbowl. And I needed to make Minestrone soup from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker Cook Book. We were having guests.

Okay, so the recipe said you could make your own pesto or use store bought. We even had some pesto, but not enough for the recipe. But I decided it wouldn't be that hard and I wanted to make it myself. So off we went to The Suburbs to find a 24 hours Giant Eagle.

We couldn't find pine nuts.

Finally, in the expensive organic section we found a bag of "extra fancy" for $8. Eight Dollars?!?!? We asked a store employee who found it after searching above and below all the nuts on the shelf. We got to the register, and the ordinary pine nuts were still $8.

Finally, after two hours of swerving all over the slippery, icy roads to get up an down The Hill (the only one in Cleveland), we made it home. To discover that the blender is broken. I chopped up the pine nuts by hand. With a knife.

The Harvard Business Review's issue on Decision Making calls this the "Sunk Cost Trap". I have come this far, put this much time and money and effort into it...I have to see it to a successful conclusion! I have to! Somehow our self esteem or our fear of failure gets wrapped up in the success of this one task. I must make my own pesto or the Steelers will lose! According to HBR, I should've let the pesto win.

Then again, this was just payback for when I helped Evan make haggis sausage by hand last weekend. Pine nuts smell better than mashed sheep liver.