6 posts tagged “shopping”
I'm excited. Today when we get home there will be a gift waiting at our door. A box of vegetables. YAY! Okay, maybe "excited" is too strong a word. Still, I'm feeling some anticipation.
We ordered home delivery of our fruits and vegetables this, week from a company called Ottawa Organics and Natural Foods. They offer a whole array of other organic product aside from these produce baskets, but this is our first order and we're just testing it out. So we're just getting the box - a selection of organic produce that's supposed to last two people about a week.
Delivery is right to your door, which is kind of old fashioned. It hearkens back to the days of food delivery we used to have when I was a child - services like the milk man and the egg man. My sister wrote a post about that a few months ago, if you're curious.
Eventually we'd like to subscribe to this sort of food delivery service over the long-term - but we'd like to find one that concentrates more on local food - whether or not it's organic. Organic food is great for health reasons, but we're more interested in doing this for the health of the planet. And while organic lowers greenhouse gas emissions by limiting the use of petrol-based fertilizers, local produce does it more effectively, reducing the larger problem of carbon emissions from transportation. Ideally we would get local organic produce, but for now, this is a first step.
The cool part is that we don't really know what we're gonna get - not specifically anyway. So it'll be a surprise, like a gift we've given to ourselves. Oh sure, we could find out what's in this week's basket - and we can even set limits and tell them the items we never want to receive - but that's half the fun. The other half is, of course, trying to figure out what the hell we're gonna cook with Kohlrabi and Swiss Chard.
I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I don't like suits. Never have. I find dress clothes can make a man look sharp, but a full-on suit is just not an attractive look to me. So I don't own one. It's never been a problem before. I work for a charity and most people in the non-profit sector don't dress up too much. You might get a shirt and tie on occasion, but mostly it's pretty casual around the office. And I have never been invited to a lot of formal events or had to attend many funerals (knock wood)
Well, now I've reached a point in my life where I'm starting to need one. Junkii and I are invited to take part in two weddings this fall - one in August as groomsmen and one in December for Junkii's sister - and we need formal attire for both. Since he doesn't own a suit either, we were in a bit of a bind. We considered renting suits for the first wedding, but when we found out we needed formal wear for the second as well and it just seemed more logical to buy a basic black suit.
Turns out our timing was pretty good. Moore's - the basic suit store in Canada - launched a buy one get one free deal just as we decided to purchase. So off we trotted to Moore's to see about taking advantage of this offer. Neither of us was terribly impressed with our shopping experience:
- The Salesperson we had helping us was pretty disinterested in showing us more than one or two jackets. (Junkii will tell you it probably didn't help that - because I don't like suits - I just wanted to get the purchase over with.)
- The salesperson was very distracted as he was preparing the instructions for the tailor and we frequently needed to correct his work.
- We were supposed to have the same suit, but mine turned out to be $100 more expensive than his - so the overall cost was about $100 more than it needed to be (again, my fault - I'm not very confrontational and I'm more likely to simply pay the extra than bother looking for another suit or challeging the price).
Bring on the fancy dress parties!
We made a pilgrimage to Waterloo, NY this weekend for a clothes-shopping excursion at the outlet mall. Not as much for ourselves as for our friend, who wanted to renew his entire wardrobe. What great timing too. Most of the outlet stores were offering sales of 30, 40, or even 50 percent off merchandise, in an attempt to help spur sagging sales figures. The fact that it was father's day weekend probably didn't hurt either.
We arrived at 1pm on Saturday, ate our lunch, and proceeded to wander from store to store until about 8:30, just before the mall closed. Seven hours! That's a lot of shopping! Junkii and I did okay - each buying a couple of pairs of shoes and a few small items - but most of our time was spent helping our co-traveler outfit himself in new couture.
Once we finished, we faced a new challenge: where to eat. None of us wanted another dose of food court (I had already had my Arby's fix at lunch). So despite our rumbly tummies, we decided to suck it up and wait for dinner until we drove back to Syracuse, where we spent the night.
A New Default Chain?
Now, we didn't want to spend a lot of time or money at a nice restaurant - nor were we dressed for fancy fare - so we elected to go to one of the many chain family restaurants on offer in the US. In the past, Junkii and I have had disastrous luck with such places. Friendly's, Chili's - they've all promised yummy food, but they've all delivered over-salted, over-sized, over-cheesed, otherwise unmemorable meals. We've nicknamed Appleby's Crappleby's because it's so dismal. Nope - from our experience, chain eateries tend to be sub-par at best. Still, they're quick and cheap, so we decided to try our luck at one we hadn't tried before (for food, anyway) - TGI Friday's.
Maybe it was because we were so hungry, but honestly the food was good. A little over-salted maybe, but we ordered off the "reasonable portion" menu and received a good-sized plate of tasty food. My crusted pork chop was tender and juicy, with a yummy sauce and some particularly good mashed potatoes. Junkii had a perfectly cooked (medium rare) 8oz steak that was like butter. We left satisfied, overjoyed that we now have a chain restaurant option that we can turn to in times of need. Huzzah.
Of course, there is another chain that we rely on. We visit one every time we go to the States, and this visit was no exception. Breakfast at IHOP! It was the highlight of day two, and really, there was nothing else to report on.
well, maybe one other thing...
No Go Hotels
Junkii and I now have a total of 4 hotels that we won't use in Syracuse anymore. we long ago concluded that the Red Roof Inn was dirty and the bed was too hard for another stay. And we found Motel 6 too smokey to bother going back. But we added two more to the list this weekend. Mel likes the Days Inn, but I find it feels old and dirty. I've always liked Super8, but on this trip Junkii found it gave him the creeps on cleanliness. So we agreed not to use either anymore.
Our co-traveler's experience this time also helped change my mind about Super8. His room had an odor so bad that he couldn't stay there. Unfortunately they had no extra space to move him to. He wound up sleeping in our room on the floor (well, on a couple of comforters and some sheets. It was a hard bed, but at least it didn't stink. They comped him his room in the end, but there's no call for such poor quality cleaning.
So far, the only hotel we agree on is the Quality inn. It's comfortable, clean, and with a friendly desk staff. That will probably be our default hotel. It's pricier, but it's worth the extra $20 a night for the peace of mind.
...and the General Obliviousness of Ottawa Shoppers
With Mom away in Arizona I seem to have become my grandmother's primary source of transportation. Every Friday I get a call asking if I'm free on Saturday to take her banking and to pick up a few groceries for the week. And if I'm lucky, that's all she asks for. Because she's quite old and slow, those two things alone take us nearly two hours to do. If she needs something from the drug store or the dollar store or Walmart on top of that, it's easily another hour and my Saturday is shot.
I shouldn't complain - I really am happy that I can help her out. I generally go for a visit anyway and this at least gives us something to do while we chat. No, what really bugs me about these shopping trips - the root of the problem - is that they have to be done on Saturdays.
As a general rule, Junkii and I try to avoid shopping on weekends. We do most of our shopping on weekday evenings, when the crowds are smaller. It's just less frustrating that way. Shopping with large crowds can be infuriating. Why, you ask? It's not the long line-ups that are frustrating, no. It's the general selfishnmess of the average consumer and the fact that they all seem utterly oblivious to the people around them.
Costco provides a perfect example. Costco is ALWAYS busy. More so on Saturday, but there's never a time when it's dead. So every time we go to Costco we wind up trapped among the cattle. Here, everyone has an XL shopping cart that they feel they must keep with them at all times.
- Looking at the produce? Keep your cart beside you - right in front of the bananas where every single shopper needs to be.
- Browsing through the DVDs? Park your cart in front of the new releases while you consider your purchase, just to keep others at bay.
- Leafing through a new book? don't place your cart off to the side, keep it in front of you so no one can reach the books
Some people get road rage, but for me it happens with shopping carts. It's enough to drive a man insane. Or at the very least, having recognized it, it's enough to keep a man conscious of his surroundings.
Now keep this in mind when you think of me escorting my grandmother through the aisles at Loblaws. Not only is she slow and bulky because of her walker and her fur coat - but she's totally self-centred, walking blindly down the centre of the aisle as people pile up behind her. And I can't say anything. She's my grandmother. I try to steer her as best I can - "Oh! The soda biscuits are over here. Come this way, Nana, and let that lady by." - but I can only do so much.
So mostly I just suffer in silence (except for this rant) and keep hoping her sons continue to help her get the rest of her shopping done during the week so I can just focus on keeping the Loblaws shoppers from killing her.
Or maybe I should just learn to be oblivious too.
Ever since we moved into our place, we've been a bit bummed. You see, our living room just isn't quite big enough. We like to entertain - we like to have lots of guests - but it tends to get a bit cramped. Oh Sure, we've managed to make some room by removing unneeded furniture - a black love seat got the boot to the upstairs guest room - but that just left us with insufficient seats for guests at our more lavish parties.
No, it was clear from the get go that we needed to take more extreme measures. I'm not talking about renovation here. We simply needed to slay the beast - our big old rear-projection TV. The beast easily took up 1/4 of the livable space in that part of the house, blocking the door to the deck and generally making the house look cramped.
We conceived of a way to make it work though - a flat panel TV, mounted above the fireplace, would take up no living space at all. Moreover, it would let us move the rest of the entertainment equipment to the otherwise unusable space beside the fireplace, and away from the deck door. And now, nearly 2 years after the move, we finally have the means to make that switch.
After much hemming and hawing, we landed on a 46" Sharp Aquos LCD . Now all that remained was to buy it. We decided to watch the Best Buy fliers and it wasn't long before we found a deal we could live with. Unfortunately that deal was on a Sony and it was from Future Shop. Well, we thought we'd see what Best Buy had to say about that and so, late Friday evening, we ducked into Best Buy and hammered out a deal with the sales manager. He promised us the Sharp bundled with a Sony Playstation3 (which features a blu-ray player). They gave us a few days to think it over and we went home to crunch the numbers again. We decided that we would go back on Sunday to make the purchase. That was our first mistake. Actually, that was our second mistake - our first was leaving delivery arrangements until Sunday.
Our First Mistake - Sunday, before heading over to best buy, we decided to go rent a cargo van from U-haul. These things are huge. And you can't see out the back. I'm not a big fan of big vehicles anyway, but I have to say this was not a pleasant experience for me. And yet I was elected to drive the thing - which had no snow tires, BTW. In our climate, you'd think that would be a no-brainer! Still, I took my time and we managed okay, but I was never so happy to get back into our little Honda after we got the TV home.
So, back to Best Buy. What a process! We got parked in the crowded parking lot (an ordeal in itself) and wandered into the store only to find that we had gone at the worst possible time: a Sunday just weeks before Christmas. Apparently that's TV-buying time. Overall it took us 2 hours before we got out of that store again.
- Step 1 - find a salesperson. The store was wall to wall with shoppers and trying to get a salesperson's attention was like trying to get my grandmother to listen to something not directly related to her. But we were in luck. The sales manager was nearby and he got us a salesperson like that . Unfortunately that salesperson was an idiot. I can't tell you how many mistakes he made - I stopped counting, but I know he certainly didn't know how to use the Best Buy computer system. Thankfully Junkii was there to catch his many flubs. And of course, all along, he never stopped insisting that we should buy the extended warranty, despite our repeated protestations.
- Step 2 - arrange a Best Buy reward card. Once we had everything organized - made sure stock was available, got a few video games picked out - the next step was to get a best buy rewards card. I mean hell, we might as well get everything we can from such a major purchase, right? That process ate up another 20 minutes - mostly just waiting in line and signing forms, but it was still tried our patience.
- Step 3 - back to the salesperson. Great, we got our card, now let us pay. The salesperson, again making sure we were certain we didn't want the warranty, then punched in our credit card info (or at least he did eventually, after a few failed attempts) and we finally got everything on the cart and headed for the door.
- Step 4 - wait while they take your package apart and put it back together. We had to wait another 20 minutes while the slow slow slow fellow at the door cut open our TV box, showed us a small portion of the TV to "prove" there was no physical damage, and then made us sign a form to that effect before slowly packaging everything up again and letting us leave. Step 4 was probably the most frustrating part of the day, made worse by the fact that he required our help to lift and move the packaging around. Shouldn't that be a staff person's job?!
Here's the thing about service. Not only was the guy at the door unhelpful, very slow, and very grumpy; basically he made us feel like Best Buy was saying "that's it - we wash our hands of you. Once you step out that door, you're on your own, sucker!" And you know, not that we should complain - we didn't buy the extended warranty after all - but there seems to be a general acceptance in our society that a store is just there to take your money. There's no pride in the products they sell - just concern over their liability. We're both disheartened that society continues to move in this direction.
Anyway, all that was left was to load the van, drive home, return the van to U-haul and head home to play with our new baby. Which we did. That was the weekend before last. This weekend, we got into the whole process of mounting the thing and selling the beast. That's a whole other post.
We decided to do our part to spur on the U.S. economy last week. On the Saturday before Black Friday we took an impromptu day trip to Syracuse, NY to buy ourselves a few nice things.
It was a lovely too. A gorgeous sunny day. At least when we left Ottawa. Once we hit Watertown, the weather turned nasty and the rest of the drive included everything from snow squalls to white-outs. It was not nice driving, but we managed to make it to the outlet mall in Waterloo in time for lunch. (Mmmmm, Arby's).
Unfortunately, we weren't staying overnight and we weren't sure how much we could bring back without invoking the wrath of Canada Customs. So we limited our search to a couple of key items.
we found these coats at Banana Republic - at 40% off! Woohoo! We still need some more fashionable scarves, but those are easy enough to find here in town.
(Incidentally, I was also in the market for a new ski jacket - the zipper was disintegrating on my old one - but didn't really expect to find one. But Columbia came through for me, providing a brand new ski jacket for 50 bucks. What could be better? And it's proven to be much warmer than my last jacket too, so I'm smiling.)
Best part of the trip? The snow stopped once we left Syracuse and at the border, Canada Customs was nice enough to wave us through without requiring us to pay tax. Sweet!
