cheap gas fail

I get these alerts from BillShrink about cheap gas. It's kind of cool because it tells you where the cheapest gas is and also calculates the cost of the detour from your house or work or wherever. I have not really used it that much, but I got an alert in my e-mail on Monday. It said the cheapest gas was $2.53 a gallon at a station in West Valley. I'm thinking, "Wow, that price is almost a full 20 cents cheaper than everywhere else right now!" The only problem is that this particular gas station is about 15 miles away from home.

On Tuesday, I was with my friend Meredith. We went grocery shopping at WinCo (which is significantly closer to said gas station, but getting gas there would still be a big detour). Meredith was driving, and I told her that there was gas for $2.53 and "we have to go and get really cheap gas and save lots of money!"

When we finally arrived at said gas station we pulled in and saw the price: $2.70 per gallon. THE EXACT SAME AS EVERYWHERE ELSE.

Post-publication addendum: Meredith tells me that it was $2.72/gallon. I consulted BillShrink to find the updated price on Wednesday and it said $2.70/gallon. BillShrink lies!

I just got my nails done. So I really shouldn't be typing this at all.

This morning a really friendly middle-aged lady who works in my building got here around the same time I did. She came in the same entrance a little before I did and she pressed the button, you know, the one for people in wheelchairs, so that the two doors would open automatically.

She said "I just had my nails done so I can't open doors!"

At the elevators, she pressed the button and stood there with her hands splayed, examining her hot-pink fingernails (I really wish I knew an alternative, awesome word for nails right now) and saying again "I just had my nails done. They're still a little . . . tacky." I think she meant that they were tacky in the sense that they were sticky. But I agreed they were tacky. In the sense of, this woman has a complete lack of good breeding (merriam-webster.com consultation).

But guys, she was friendly. Here she is chatting me up about her nails and she warned me in the elevator that it's slated to snow today, and said good morning when she was walking in the doors to the building, and "have a good day" when she got off the elevator before me (on the third floor). She also told me about how she was relieved her tights were the right color to coordinate with her outfit because she's grabbed the wrong ones before.

But all I could think about her was things like "I wonder if she'll be incapacitated at work today because of her nails," and "Did she go get her nails done at 6 this morning?" and "Ridiculous." I was judging her harshly.

Here's the kicker, though: I totally use that automatic door opening button when I walk into work. I don't even have a good excuse like this woman does. I'm just WAY lazy.

cheese juice

You know when you have string cheese and you take it out of the fridge and the texture gets kind of weird and it's not quite as stringy? And it starts getting slimy on the outside?

This happens to you, right?

I know it happens to me, so when I brought string cheese to work today, I told myself to refrigerate it. But it never happened.

And then I foolishly tried to eat said string cheese in the car on my way back to work from lunch, and you know what happened? Cheese juice leaked all over my pants.

I wasn't quite sure what to do about it but I ruled out visiting the bathroom in an attempt to wash it off because I figured I can avoid other people for the remaining two hours I have left at work, and I would rather avoid looking like I have just wet my pants.

I am pretty sure this was the right decision.

Are you a parent?

So my friend Britney issued a call for responses on her blog about the question of marriage. i.e., She wanted her blog readership to respond to the question, "Why get married anyway?"

Her blog post inspired me to do something similar. My question is a bit different: Why reproduce?

I am interested in people's thoughts about their personal reasons for having kids. Hit me.

the travesty

Alright Costco, I don't know why you're selling caskets in the first place, but "The Mother Casket"?

For shame. I do understand that there is the word Mother embroidered on the casket, and the name seems obvious, but let's think about this a little more.

Furthermore, the interior description says "Nude crepe."

Right after it says this:

THERE IS NO SCIENTIFIC OR OTHER EVIDENCE THAT ANY CASKET WITH A SEALING DEVICE WILL PRESERVE HUMAN REMAINS

(In all caps because Costco wants to ensure they are not held liable for decomposition of loved ones' bodies.)

Maybe this blog post is in poor taste, but so is the name of this casket model, admittedly. It gets good ratings, though, which is saying something for Costco's online storefront, where reviews are hard to come by.

Also, when I'm dead, please don't spend a lot of money on my funeral and casket. That will be of no use to anyone.

another one of those posts

I used to write in my journal a lot. I don't much anymore, and ever since I stopped writing consistently, I have mourned the fact that I don't. (Yet I haven't done anything about it.) I think it was important for me in many ways. Among them, it gave me a chance to work through my feelings and often, to bring a new perspective and understanding to those feelings and ideas. It gave me a chance to respond. To think about all of these stimuli that bombard me constantly.

The lessening of my journal writing seemed to correlate with the beginnings of a committed relationship (which resulted eventually in marriage; if you hadn't guessed, I'm talking about Husband). I wondered if the relationship between lack of journal writing and presence of commitment was meaningful beyond the correlation. I think in a way it is. This makes me feel a little better about not journal-writing these days. I have found a replacement, in a sense—a safe place to express myself.

It's sort of a trade-off though. Communication with a human being is dynamic and communication with a piece of paper (no audience intended) is not. I gain some love but I lose some understanding and perceived self-actualization in the process.

I haven't been reading Saussure (was I supposed to read him as a student of English language/linguistics during my undergrad career?), but Husband has, and from this secondhand reading, I interpret language as a means to thought. In fact, I've got a blog titled that (By the way, this blog is where I post poetry I write, which is another thing that I haven't done for quite some time—related?).

Meaning.

I find my thoughts in the expression of them.

I think Saussure might support this.

I cannot think of anything I love more than doing it (communication) well, or helping someone else do it well, or reading someone's words who has done it really well. It's why I love writing, editing, reading. When that understanding (that understanding: the understanding that goes, oddly, completely beyond language) is achieved between two minds, two souls—that is an incredibly beautiful moment. And nothing is more eminently frustrating than miscommunication, language failure, and disconnectedness.

I wish I could talk better with people and narrow the gap between souls more often through conversation. I am not very good at conversation. But when I feel like language is transcended and understanding is achieved between another person and me . . . well, the word that comes to mind is love, and that can be felt in so many ways.

Funny that this love is both found in and destroyed by language. One of my favorite songs by Modest Mouse is "Blame It on the Tetons," and there is a line in there that goes like this:

Language is the liquid

That we’re all dissolved in

Great for solving problems

After it creates the problem

I feel like language is a perfect analogy for life that way. So amazing and so imperfect and so inescapable.

in no particular order

My coworker Margaret and I traded computers at work today for a little while. When I received my computer back, my desktop background was set to a slideshow of these lovelies:

(The file name for the above artistic masterpiece was "future.jpg.")

(Sorry for you single guys out there. Margaret is already hitched.)

how I feel

I feel like this today. (The picture is accurate: I did wear my hair curly today. And it is shedding all over my black sweater.)

another post about grocery shopping

This weekend I was really looking forward to going to Costco and Winco and doing a price comparison on some items I commonly buy (and especially those I sometimes get in bulk from Costco). It was the most exciting weekend activity EVER. (Nerdy, I know.)

Since I know you're all as interested as me, I shall tell you the results. I was somewhat surprised by my findings, perhaps naively so. I really love Winco's bulk foods section and love that you can get however much you want or need of whatever it is you want or need. And I have noted that the prices of the bulk items per pound are cheaper than other places I've seen items sold by weight. I'm less impressed when I compare other areas of the store, though; however, the sales are often pretty good. Most of the items I compared were items you could find in the Winco bulk foods section.

Costco's worthiness was demonstrated in the comparison. (The comparisons are not all fair, I should say. Costco has better quality goods, generally speaking, but I tried to match the products as closely as possible.) Here are the results:

Costco	item	Winco
1.08/lb	whole wheat spaghetti	.98/lb
1.06/lb	penne	.76/lb
1.96/lb	egg noodles	1.10/lb
2.22/lb (organic)	peanut butter	1.48/lb (non-organic, self-churned)
3.57/lb	almond butter	3.96/lb
1.66/gallon	milk	1.88/gallon
6.29/lb	pure maple syrup	8.85/lb
1.76/lb	semi-sweet chocolate chips	2.21/lb
2.33/lb	dried cranberries	3.67/lb
2.21/lb (name-brand)	honey nut cheerios	1.79/lb
.75/lb (organic)	apple sauce	.54/lb
1.16/lb	short-grain brown rice	.74/lb
.28/lb (for 25 lb bag)	long-grain white rice	.45/lb
2.50/lb	quinoa	3.52/lb
2.00/lb	honey	2.24/lb
.69/lb (10 lbs)	oats	.51/lb
4.22/gallon	soy milk	5.12/gallon
4.60/lb	walnuts	3.30/lb
5.28/lb	pecans	8.50/lb
3.33/lb	almonds	3.78/lb
.24/lb (for 25 lb bag)	all purpose flour	.27/lb
.61/lb	sugar	.46/lb
.81/lb	brown sugar	.97/lb
18.62/gallon	olive oil	28.62/gallon
5.96/gallon	vegetable oil	6.27/gallon
6.32/gallon	canola oil	7.18/gallon
.62/lb	tomato sauce	.80/lb
1.32/lb	tomato paste	1.68/lb
1.06/lb	diced tomatoes	1.02/lb

Some of the results were interesting. For example, although pecans and almonds are cheaper at Costco, walnuts are not. Pecans are significantly cheaper at Costco. Granulated sugar is quite a bit cheaper at Winco, and flour is comparable (I probably will still buy from Winco to avoid dealing with the 25 lb bag, though). I did not realize that canola oil is more expensive than vegetable oil. Brown rice is cheaper at Winco. Peanut butter is too, but almond butter is cheaper at Costco. I compared S&W canned garbanzo beans and black beans as well, and it turned out they were the same at both Costco and Winco: .68/can.

I hope you appreciated the results of my experiment. I guess shopping at Costco does save money after all. Which makes me feel a little better about paying to shop there? Hmm, I didn't factor that into the prices . . .

vacated houses

(Disclaimer: I'm posting this on my personal blog in order to disassociate Tim from it. He takes no responsibility for the events narrated herein.)

First a little background:

Our current apartment is a basement apartment. When we moved in, the house above was being rented. We didn't get to know our upstairs neighbors a whole lot, partially because they were not letting the apartment. (That is to say: our landlord lives somewhere else.)

Recently, something strange happened, and the events still are shrouded in a cloud of mystery. There seemed to be intimations of an upcoming relocation in the house upstairs. This lasted a few days. (Glimpses of our neighbors with luggage, coming in and out of the house frequently, weekly yard sales, etc.) Then there were no people up there anymore, just things.

Around this same time, someone came by our apartment asking for the landlord's contact information. She said she was a friend of the family who had been renting the house and that there was a "family emergency" (one which demanded a sudden move, apparently), and she said that she needed to let the landlord know that they had moved out.

Being curious, we walked through the house. You would, too, wouldn't you? (Our tour was facilitated by a door in the basement that is broken and won't latch, let alone lock.) The house was a complete mess. I felt like we were walking through a house that had been vacated due to some sort of apocalyptic event that no one told us was happening. (Should we pick up and run, too? Were we in danger?) You know, take what you can carry and then leave the rest, and also maybe trash the rest of it, too, just for fun? There was spray paint in some areas of the house. Half-eaten cream pie was rotting in the kitchen, the garbage overflowing. It looked like the floors hadn't been cleaned in years. Ripped-out pages of a questionable magazine was lying about in one of the bedrooms. In another bedroom, marker writing appeared all over the walls.

The scariest thing, though, was this, which you see just as you open the broken door to enter the house:


What kind of sadistic decorations are these? SO CREEPY. (Or am I the creepy one? I'll let you be the judge.)

But there is a bright side to all of this. The landlord came with his family and extended family, prepared with a trailer and hundreds of large black garbage sacks, to remove most of the remaining junk. But not before I could score a decent vacuum off of our dear neighbors! This is actually the second time we scored off them, because a few weeks before, we'd bought a kitchen table set for $50 from them at a yard sale—no matter that we can't actually fit it in our apartment. (I think they'd want us to enjoy their vacuum. They seemed like nice people.)

Also, now that it's a lot less creepy to go in this vacant house, I've been doing laundry for free there. (Beats going to a laundromat. And no, the landlord doesn't know, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't mind, because he seems like a nice person. And yes, I'm a terrible person. But Tim isn't.)

The end.

NOTE: To the landlord or former renters of the house, if you happen to stumble on this obscure blog, I will relinquish the vacuum upon request.