ALWAYS LOW PRICES, ALWAYS.....BUT AT WHAT COST?

Anybody who knows me, knows that I am no fan of Mega Corporations and how they swallow up the small independent business in the name of free trade and capitalism. You also know that I am one savvy bargain hunter.

Read this article before you go buy another thing at a Wal-Mart Store. Yes, you can get a good deal(see CHEAP)inside those doors but at what cost ultimately to the health of our economy?
If you've been touched by downsizing or outsourcing of jobs AND you've been lured in by the smiley yellow circle's siren song, you may be partially responsible for your own undoing. Yes, that 10 cents off your Jumbo Pack of Toilet Paper is linked to why your job at the Proctor & Gamble Plant was eliminated.
Save 34 cents on that mega-can of Dole Pineapple(sliced or chunks)and see your Dole Stock sink 5 points every year.

We've created a Monster in this Country and it's going to eat us alive if we don't reign it in. THINK before you buy....make wise choices!

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

Sluggy

BOXING WITH THE BIG ORANGE BOX STORE

I hope everyone had a relaxing and reflective Memorial Day weekend. I hope you observed a moment of silence or said a prayer for all those who Have Served our Country in the Military and especially for those who paid the ultimate price in that service.

We got alot of errands run and went down the mountain to the BIG ORANGE BOX STORE to pick out carpeting for my daughter's room and buy a patio set.
So I am wating now for the 'measuring gal' to come to measure the room for the carpet. The patio delivery was suppose to be today but after yesterday's phone call, we cancelled that order.
After hubby got off the phone, he looked at me and said slowly in a measured tone, "Home Depot....Bad, Lowe's....Good". I had totally forgotten about the debacle last year with the tile floor, we had installed in the kitchen, that HOME DESPOT botched. *INSERT V-8 Moment here*

Hubby had an accident with a melted aluminum clad pan about 16 months ago. He cooked my brand new Emeril Ware pan til the bottom melted and then slung the pan from the stove to the sink. The little droplets of melted metal hit the vinyl floor and sizzled merrily.


So we took up the vinly in prep for the new tile floor we arranged for HD to lay, only to find that the vinyl floor was NOT original to the house....there was another vinyl floor under it! After removing 2 layers of floor we waited for the tilers to arrive......and waited......and waited......

Yes, a simple tile floor install took 2+ months because the ninnies at HD couldn't even order the correct tile! We had to keep sending it back and reordering. Then when they got that right, the installer came and did the install but kept trying to get me to ok additional side things for additional money-off the books & directly into his pocket of course. Then he stole leftover tiles AND left trash all over my garage where he did the tile cutting and grout/mortar mixing.
For those 2+ months, I had an non-functioning kitchen-a plywood floor and no stove/oven and the kitchen island was living out under a tarp on the deck. And what do I get from THE DESPOT for my $2500.00? Not even a 'Gee, we're so sorry we inconveninced you GREATLY and screwed everything up and turned your home into a Living Hell for 3 months!, that's what!!

So it really shouldn't have surprised me that when we bought the patio set on Sunday that we'd have problems.
First off, they had no tables umbrellas or stands left, just the display model, which of course, they wouldn't even give us a discount on as it was a shopworn floor model. Of course, it never crossed their minds to offer to call the OTHER HOME DESPOT a half hour away to see if THEY had those pieces in stock.
Then they charged us a $60 delivery fee, when I can go online and order this stuff from the website and get FREE DELIVERY as the total is over $49.
But we went ahead and bought it, to just GIT R DONE and arranged for a Wednesday delivery.
Phone call from HD comes in Tueday late afternoon. There is a 'problem' delivering our set b/c the table/umbrella/stand are NOT in boxes-yes, we know that....they are the DISPLAY MODELS.
Everything on the truck has to be boxes so they have to take apart the table and find boxes to put all 3 items in before they will deliver them. So.....I buy a table that's scratched up but I at least don't have to assemble it and they are going to take it apart(I didn't even get a chance to ask if they were going to CHARGE me additional to do that!)and throw it in a box-that it doesn't neccessarily fit in properly so it could get even MORE DINGED UP and then they are going to drive it about 8 WHOLE MILES up the Mountain and I get the priviledge of paying them $60 for this?
Ummmm....on second thought, I don't THINK so! I told them they can save themselves all that trouble and KEEP their overpriced crap patio set.

So I will continue to be patio set-less until I can get to LOWE'S or some other store where at least the management staff's knuckles don't drag the ground when they walk.

sluggy

AND THE WINNER IS.....

Unless you have been in a coma, you probably know that the winner of Season Five of AMERICAN IDOL was crowned last night. TAYLOR HICKS is his name and SOUL PATROL is his game. My 13 yr. old daughter has lived and died by the weekly vote-off of contestants this season. She hasn't had the fervor for watching the show the last week tho since her Pick for the Idol-Elliot-was sent packing.

I've got to say that I am NOT an American Idol zealot. My favorite part of the whole process and the only part I do make an effort to watch are the audition shows. Basically, I watch those episodes because seeing all those HORRIBLY BAD SINGERS who think they are ready for stardom is funny as hell!

I also think that SIMON is the only judge who is doing any of these contestants a favor with his critiques & I find myself usually agreeing with his opinions.
Life is hard baby! If you as a judge are letting self-deluded people continue on a dead end path by NOT telling them the COLD HARD TRUTH about their abilities(or lack thereof), then you are totally disrespectful of yourself and those you critique.

I caught some of the later shows by accident. Since the tv & computer are in the same room, if I happened to be at the computer while AI was on, I got at least an earful of what was going on. From this old 'not-too-interested' viewers opinion, of the top 10 Finalists, there were only TWO singers who stood out.....Taylor and Chris.
Yes, all of them had good voices. Some of them needed more training or polish than others. If someone has good pitch and a good insrument, you can always coach them to be better technically. And you can always dress them better too. What you can't give them is THE "IT" FACTOR. Call it charisma......call it that certain unexplained something. It's that internal spark that some people have and alot more don't. It gives someone their sense of knowing who they are and projecting their presents out into the world through that tv camera. Katherine McPherson is a pretty girl, with a sultry voice but no "IT".
Taylor & Chris have "IT" in spades....as did Kelly Clarkson.
And if Taylor & Chris both get savvy people behind them guiding their paths, they'll both have satisfying careers for as long as they'd like.

Daughter may be bummed about her Elliot losing, but I got tickets to the AI Tour when it comes to our town so she can take solice in being able to hear him at least 1 more time before he disappears into AI history.

I last thing I want to mention here. A local newscaster, in reference to the AI voting, said that more home viewers cast votes in this Final AI Vote-Off than have ever cast votes in a single U.S. Presidential Election.

Now isn't that a very sad comment on the state of our country & culture.

Perhaps we need to have sing-offs in our presidential campaigning process to get the voters to participate in elections?
Or maybe we should give these AI contestants a shot at our top political jobs??
I don't think they would do much worse than the leaders we have now.....
At least they'd be entertaining as they sent our country to hell.

sluggy

BITING THE KITCHEN BULLET

I am in a quandry. One of the final projects in our kitchen remodel involves replacing the old counter tops. Now, like everyone I would LOVE to install granite or quartz, etc. counters. I even toyed with the idea of stainless steel tops but I came to my senses quickly after getting THAT price quote! *THUD*

Here's the thing. With the location & size of our house, combined with where ours falls, in terms of the price/value of houses in our neighborhood, I can't see sinking 20-30K into a kitchen update in a 180K house. Our house is pretty near the top of the values of homes in our development so sinking tons of cash into it isn't house smart in terms of resale. We haven't redesigned the kitchen space but have made improvements in the appliances, new flooring, the paint & window treatments, added crown molding, upgrade lighting & door/drawer hardware....basically redoning the kitchen short of changing the floorplan and cabinets/tops. The cabinets aren't top-of-the-line or my taste neccesarily, but they are in pretty good shape.
With the cost of new cabinetry, we aren't replacing them. The countertops on the other hand, are an eyesore. I think new tops would make the cabinets look good enough to get away with keeping them.

The problem is, you want nice countertops, right? But, being cost conscious, I can't see spending
what they want for stone or corian type tops when they are going on old cabinets. Then again, putting new laminate tops on them might look better than what's on there now, but is definitely NOT an upgrade!
I saw a piece on tv about granite tiles-large tiles, not small ones. Perhaps using that on the countertops instead of solid granite in a dark color and then doing a solid granite top on the island would keep the price down to where I can sleep at nights and would look nice even that I could live with it during my waking hours too.
I'll be getting some quotes for going that route and then make a decision.

After I get the counters worked out the FINAL sticking point in the kitchen is the tile backsplash. It's in good shape BUT.....between the white tiles(which are nice and neutral)are small accent tiles in a dusty/pale blue. Now this color went with the original kitchen color scheme but not with my vision. And once I do get new countertops I KNOW that blue tile is going to stick out bigtime and I won't be able to ignore it any longer. I hate to replace perfectly good condition tile and I know the cost of retiling even this small stretch of wallspace won't be cheap. I sure wish hubby would be confident enough in my technical skills to let us try to do this tiling job ourselves. What's the worst that can happen? We screw it up and have to pay someone
to finish the job....heck, if we don't do it, we have to pay someone else to do it anyway, right? What would it hurt to try?

Once I get past this mental block and get this tile and tops done, I'll have a kitchen that doesn't turn my stomach to look at it.
It's about time I say!
Sluggy

THE NANNY STATE

From the annals of "Why the Governement should stay out of our lives", here's my RL latest installment.

My oldest son has that out of control form of acne. This is not your normal teen acne that ProActiv or those topical over-the-counter astringents and even antibiotics can help. So, the family doc writes him a script for Accutane. Now I know all about the warnings about using this very powerful drug, as hubby was on it back in the 80's, a few years into our marriage. The doc gives us the obligatory warnings about the side effects and things we need to do and avoid while on it.

We take the prescription to the pharmacist. She says it can't be filled b/c the doc has to be signed up for some GOVERNMENT PROGRAM where my son has to register before she can legally dispense the drug. She also says this is a NEW PROGRAM and not the one they had in place before that used the yellow stickers. She also adds that if we don't get back to her with some card or # or something we need to procure within 7 DAYS, that the prescription can't be filled-we'll have to get a new prescription written.

So, off we go back to the doc a week later to see if he's registered for this PROGRAM. He says yes, he's been prescribing this medicine...yadda, yadda, yadda. The receptionist goes and gives us a yellow sticker with some numbers on it & has the doc rewrite the script. I try to tell her that no, this sticker thing isn't being used anymore and there is something NEWER and other hoops we have to jump through to get the medicine. She poo poos me and says this is all we need, pats me on the head and sends me off like a good little mindless patient. I guess I really do look like I am a total idiot and don't know anything, but that seems to be the way things are for women here in Pennsyltucky.

And back we go to the pharmacy. I give the clerk the yellow sticker and such and a few seconds later the pharmacist comes back to the counter to tell me what I already know.....this new piece of paper isn't the Golden Ticket that will get me the drugs I seek. I tell her I know it's not right but somebody other than a 'KNOW NOTHING' Patient has to talk to this Doc from On High & tell him he isn't registered for the new Program that the GOVERNMENT REQUIRES the DRs join.

She says she'll call the dr. & again tells me my prescription will self-destruct in 7 days if we don't get the secret pin number or such & we'll have to get another script written. Before she sends me off into limbo to wait for the dr. to be contacted and get his governmental shit together, she hands me the flyer about this GOVERNMENT PROGRAM that we are having to cowtow to....it's called IPLEDGE. ( I wonder if I can plug it into my IPOD?)
So are you ready for the THRUST of this REQUIRED PROGRAM that is causing all this consternation in mine and my son's lives?? The IPLEDGE PROGRAM is basically a program to track and monitor ACCUTANE USERS and protect the DRUG COMPANY from lawsuits if a User becomes PREGNANT while on this drug!
HELLO???
There is a .00000001% chance of my 15 YEAR OLD TEENAGE SON becoming pregnant while taking this drug or any other drug for that matter, n'est pas?
We are having to go through all this crab so he won't get pregnant. How totally LUDICRIOUS and the biggest waste of time as well as Taxpayers' Dollars is this?!!!? And secondly, why is the government spending MY MONEY to protect
the Drug Company from being sued??

The Governemnt has better STOP spending MY MONEY in ludicrious ways and trying to protect me from myself and start thinking about spending their energies and MY OWN MONEY protecting themselves from my wrath!

Whoever thought that giving Power Hungry Clowns access to unlimited wealth and NO ACCOUNTABILITY for THEIR ACTIONS was a GOOD thing had better get a clue that they are DEAD WRONG!
What the world needs is less GOVERNEMENT! PERIOD
Support your local Libertarian Candidates!
sluggy

SIZE DOES MATTER

An online friend sent me this link to the "Biggest Slug in The History of the World".
www.cheesy-wotsits.co.uk/bigslug.htm

Perhaps in the U.K. that's stupendous, but obviously they have never experienced the U.S. Pacific Northwest's Banana Slug.
http://www.walnet.org/stanley_woods/slugz/bananaslug.html

And I would dare say, that "I" am the biggest slug around......

sluggy

FOR SALE-A House With a View

I just realized that I missed an opportunity last Saturday. That was the day of the open house/preview for a Home that is being auctioned off nearby here, in Kingston Township, PA.
That's just outside of Wilkes-Barre, PA for you folks not up on your NEPA geography.

Houses go on the auction block everyday but this house is a tad 'special'. It's the government seized property that belonged to HUGO SELENSKI, our very own home-grown Serial Killer. You know, the guy who shot drug dealers, hacked them up and burned their bodies and when he got caught & sent off to prison, he actually used the old cliche of tying bedsheets together to escape. (They did eventually recapture him.)
If you haven't heard of him, go google it. He was the heartthrob of Local girls at the first of his trials recently.....they showed up with signs and marriage proposals at the courthouse....go figure! Just goes to show you that SOME people in this world don't have anything approaching SENSE!

Anyway, come May 25th, you've got quite the opportunity to own a piece of PA notoriety, as that's the day of the auction. If you can't get to the only other preview being held on May 21st, check out the property here.....
http://www.treas.gov/auctions/customs/olivetroad.html

The house, from the photo in the paper, looks quite spacious, if not a bit dated in style. There's some work that needs doing, like electrical and some interior repairs. I guess Hugo didn't have much time left over for fix-ups after murdering drug dealers.....he'd rather relax with a cold one in front of the plasma tv after a hard day gunning down fellow hoodlums than repairing the drywall in the hall or recaulking the bathtub.

Turns out Hugo was more an outdoor kind of guy around the house....like working on landscaping around the grounds and such. He use to spend alot of his free time on the old homestead around the burn pit....only the rubbish he was burning wasn't the usual kind, but chunks of criminals he had buddies hack up with saws. The newspaper article stated that you can still see the burn pit from the large living room picture window. I'd bet with a little digging you could unearth some bones on the property as the police didn't dig the whole yard up looking for evidence. Use these to set up your own Hugo Museum! Get some poltergeit chasing camera crew into the house to validate your claim that the property is haunted and you've got a real moneymaking venture on your hands and the newest freak show attraction in this part of PA. The Economic Commission of W-B is always welcoming job opportunities and events that bring dollars into the area....maybe you can get some kind of city business grant to get this venture off the ground? I wonder if the Mayor Leighton will 'believe' this to be a good thing for Wilkes-Barre and use it in his "I Believe" campaign.

Auction is May 25th, at 11am sharp........get those bidding paddles & checkbooks out and get in line!

Sluggy

In Search of Scrambled Eggs
It's 11 am on a rainy Monday and I am about ready to drag my sorryass back to bed. I am still coughing persistently despise 2 weeks of meds from the family doc. ugh

This internet thing is highly addictive. Someone on a mailing list I am on sent a post about how you can make scrambled eggs by placing them in a Ziploc type bag put into a pot of boiling water. I went to google it to make sure it wasn't just one of those urban legends or online rumours that you see often on the web.
From there, I pulled up a post from someone's blog having to do with them trying out this method of egg cooking. As I read the post, I became absorbed by this blogger's writing. Next thing I know, I looked up and an hour and 1/2 had passed and I had become privy to some intimate glimpses into this person's life. Quite a bit about his background and his current family drama of his weight loss, how his wife's alcoholism is destroying their marriage & the uncertain state of what to do about his wife's father who's plummeting into Alzheimer's like dementia at a rapid rate. I've never met this guy yet I know more about his life and his inner feelings than I know about most people I've known for 20 years and, on the other hand, he hasn't a CLUE I exist!

Likewise, I am on a few online mailing lists. There are large numbers of members on some of these lists that have NEVER posted yet continue to remain on the lists and read about the lives of those who do post.
The internet is responsible for turning the vast majority of us into voyeurs. If we aren't buying crap on eBay, the payments for which we have to put on credit cards b/c we are 1 paycheck away from financial disaster, we are eavesdropping on total strangers lives and feelings.

Now how sick is this and what does it say about our current culture?

What drives someone to want to blog and share their life with the cyberworld?
A way to vent or talk out their conflicts when they have no one with which to share the process?
A misguided sense of their own importance in the world?
A way to communicate with the world without having to hear any criticism?

If you get that one figured out, I'd love to know. ;-)
sluggy

Welcome to my slimey blog

My First Entry

Greetings to all!
I hope ya'll find something worth reading here...if not today, some other day in the future.

I've been 'online' since Jan. '98 and in that time I've spent alot of hours on eBay, both as a buyer and seller. I've interacted with 'all kinds' as the old foks say.
The thing that brought me to eBay was Beanie Babies. Yes, I was one of those crazed Beanie Collectors-and later Sellers-who stood in lines at Hellmark Stores, Zany Brainys, etc. in 3 states for the priviledge of giving them $5 or $6 for a cheap little kid's toy. You are thinking, "This slug has/had waaay too much time on her hands." Between having 3 kids under the age of 8(one of which was 2 and still home all day), no job out in the workplace, an incredibly small house to clean & no adult to talk to, yes, I did have alot of time on my hands to drive around and shop.

I didn't get into Beanies early enough to have had any of the real old 'valuable' ones and I didn't spend outrageously inflated amounts for the hard to find ones or the retired ones. I knew and still know waaaay too many people who spent $100 or more for a Princess Beanie back in the day. By waiting a few months after it was released, I was able to get one for $5 reg. retail instead of having to pay through the nose to a secondary source like a flea market or eBay. I did turn to reselling some beanies on eBay in order to pay for my habit......sold things like Valentina bear beanie on eBay for $40 when it first came out and I happened to find one in a store for $5. Now that beanies sell for pennies on the dollar, even the old ones, do I feel bad for conning someone out of $40 for a toy? Nah.....it's a Free Market Economy baby! Something is only as valuable as what someone else will pay for it.

My main TY Addiction wasn't beanies, it was Attic Treasures. I switched over to Attics soon after finding those. Having alot of disposable income b/c of a tiny mortgage then on my tiny house, gave me quite the blank check for spending too much on these toys. I saw I could resell these Attics as more people discovered them, so I ended up acquiring many many Attics to resell on eBay.

When the Beanie/Attic market started it's fast slide into the basement in early '00, I got stuck holding lots of inventory that I couldn't sell. *sigh* Where was that damned crystal ball when I needed it?! I donated tons of them to various charities(Sallie's, Goodwill, various fundraisers that needed prizes, etc.) over the last few years. I still have boxes tucked away around here but I am hopeing that by the end of this year, I can completely 'divest' and put this long, ugly chapter of my addictive personality to bed.

So that, in a nutshell, is how I ended up selling stuff on eBay. It was a way to get rid of things(if only recouping small portions of what I spent)and then to sell off other things taking up space in my life. Every year, as eBay raises their fees and gets more impersonal and changes up the way to do things just for the sake of changing things and not for making the process any better, I tell myself I'm going to quit eBay at the end of this year......at the end of this season.......at the end of next month....... eBay is a hard habit to kick and I never seem to reach that deadline and actually stop even though little tiny sellers like me on eBay can't really make any money.

I predict that the next big money making scheme for eBay will be psychologists who set up eBay interventions for concerned families and offer therapy for eBay addicts. Besides the Sellers who sell Shipping Supplies to other Sellers on eBay & eBay executives, eBay Therapists will be the only other people actually turning a profit from eBay.

Ok....enough for now. Time to slime back under my shell.
sluggy