The cashless revolution (is that really a thing?) has its disadvantages. Since I joined up and started doing all of my grocery shopping, and most of my incidental shopping, using my debit card, I haven't had to carry around wads of cash that I didn't have anyway. That makes it easier to do my banking, because all I have to do is deposit my meager paycheck at the ATM and go on about my business.

There are times, though, when cash comes in handy, and if you don't shop with cash, you might not have it when you need it. I've found this particularly true when eating in a restaurant and wishing I had the right combination of bills for a tip, and even more so in coffee bars. Even at Starbucks, where obviously I use my gold card, I like to leave a buck in the tip jar, but if you don't shop with cash you might well not have a buck in your wallet.

So today when I needed light bulbs I stopped at the hardware store and paid for them in cash, just so I could get change back and put a few extra one-dollar bills in my wallet. That should hold me for awhile. It took me a long time to embrace cashless transactions, but once I did I quickly became a true believer. And I'll stay that way until the banks figure out a way to charge me extra for it. So far my bank has been kind in that regard.

The light bulbs, by the way, were for the strip of fancy bulbs above my bathroom mirror. It holds four round frosted "vanity globes," of which two had been burned out for some time. I replaced those two today and immediately regretted it, after seeing myself in that mirror more clearly than I have for a few weeks. I didn't need to see that, and I'm waiting for the other two bulbs to burn out on schedule.