Friday's Random Thoughts

Happy Friday!  I hope you have a wonderful weekend!  I have had a very interesting couple of weeks - people are always so facinating!  They never cease to amaze me with their antics and behaviour! 

- I came home from the lunch the other day and the Little Prince came tearing down the call shouting 'Mommy, mommy, mommy!' and threw himself at me.  For no reason other than I had come home.  It was awesome!

- I went into Walmart the other day, picked up the one thing I needed and got into the '10 Items or Less' line.  As we were waiting the woman in front of me mumbled in to me 'I don't think she knows how to count' which, of course, made me look up to see what she was talking about....the woman in front of her had a FULL cart!  She had put 3 or 4 things on the conveyer belt when I said 'Excuse me madam, I think maybe you didn't notice this is a 10 or less line, you will probably want to be into one of the other lines'.  I like to think I have mastered the art of pointing out how stupid someone is in a subtly sarcastic way while appearing to be doubting myself in an innocent sort of way.  I thank all those years of watching Designing Women reruns and have learned anything can sound charming when said with a slight Southern accent.  Everyone around me thought I was charming - Full Cart Woman did not.  She was very ticked off that someone would actually challenge her, eventually took her items off the belt and said 'There!  Are you happy now?!'.  I replied 'Yes, because I am in a 10 Items or Less line' and she stormed off yelling obscenities at me I didn't care to rebut.  What surprised me is how 15 other people just stood there silent and staring.  I wonder if they would've helped at all if Full Cart Woman had physically attacked me. 

- My housekeeper had a get together at her house and since I was passing by on my way home from the aformentioned Walmart trip I decided to stop in.  One of the things she was serving is peeled, sliced cucumbers with salt.  That's the entire dish.  And you know, I had forgotten just how delicious the simplicity of summer can be. 

- My mail lady is very awesome.  If I leave my mail sticking out of my mailbox she will take it for me and mail it since she is going to the post office anyway.  This saves me going to the mailbox with a toddler in tow when that might be the only reason we leave the house that day.  Mail carriers are not obligated to take mail for anyone but mine has told me she doesnt mind as long as it isn't a big parcel or anything.  I send a lot of mail so a few times a week she will take cards and letters for me.  I was in our local chocolate shop buying chocolates for HHL so I decided to get my mail lady a box of them too.  I left a note on my mail box asking her to knock the door but I wasn't home when she came...the Suburban Prince answered the door and told her I got them for her because she is always so nice about taking the mail and always does a great job of delivering the mail.  He told me he thought she was going to cry!  She said no one has ever given her a gift for bringing the mail!

- When you go to a party and take a plate of something for the food table please dont try to take the food with you when you leave...even if you have only been there an hour and no one has touched the dish you brought.  If the host/ess insists you take some food then by all means...but it's tacky to claim ownership on food you brought to an event.  It no longers belongs to you, it belongs to the host/ess and the party.

- I have been reading the Millenium Series by Stieg Larsson and I can't put them down!  I am about halfway through The Girl Who Played With Fire and I am torn - I want to hurry up and get to the end and find out what is going on but then I also know there wont be any more than 3 books so I want to savour them. 

- And email conversation yesterday left me a bit tiggered.  It takes me back to this post about all of the free advertising bloggers do without even thinking about it.  Just this morning I saw posts on nail polish, stationary and clothing and I know none of those bloggers were comensated in any way by the companies.  I was contacted about putting some information on my blog and was actually expected to do this...just because.  Not for a link exchange, not for product, not for money...just because.  This isn't a small struggling business, this is a business with the money to hire the marketing team who contacted me.  Do you realise how many bloggers would do this for free and never ask what's in it for them?  Companies are now expecting to get free advertising on our blogs and somewhere along the line we missed the chance to make a killing!  No other publication would provide so much free promotion for every product under the sun.  **Update - Yes, we all blog about products from time to time, but I am seeing more and more blogs that are nothing more than product showcases and we have no idea how powerful these blogs are - these bloggers invest a lot of time and energy into promoting companies for nothing and the companies have budgets for this sort of thing.  If I blog about shoes there is the protential for 320 people guaranteed seeing it.  Who knows how many blog rolls I am on...so the thought that we aren't going to 'make or break' a company should be considered.  I do appreciate when someone blogs about a product I am considering, but I also think the company should thank that blogger for advertising for them.  I'm not saying stop talking about products, but what I am hoping is we will all think about what we are doing and perhaps let companies know we should be 'thanked' for our brand loyalty and positive posts.

- Are all men born knowing how to turn on a BBQ?  I dont recall ever being taught how to use one and every time I want to grill anything I have to ask the Suburban Princee to come and light it or at least talk me through it.

- Politics, religion and money conversations are best conducted in your own home, not someone else's.  If you are just entering the grown up social scene, keep in mind you don't always know who you are talking to and who might overhear you.  You could lose friends, opportunities and respect if your opinions are on the extreme end - 'neutral topics only' at cocktails parties!  Yes I got phone calls about an incident at our cocktail party.  I didn't even know about it so I must've been in the kitchen getting drinks or food or something.

- Does anyone know what happened to HB&HB ?  I realised I havn't seen or heard a peep from her all year and her blog doesn't seem to exist anymore.

- If you are wondering why you havn't seen me commenting much lately, I apologize but my time has been quite limited recently and I dont always get to go through all of my favourite blogs and leave comments. I have mentioned the word verification before and sometimes when I see this on the comments I just close the page and dont bother leaving a comment - it just takes too long with all the extra clicks and I know I am not alone in this so...here is how to take it off...At the top of your blog click on ‘Design’ then click on the tab called ‘Settings’. Click on ‘Comments’ then scroll down to the bottom of the page and where it says ‘Show word verification for comments?’ click on NO. Lastly, click on save settings.


Have a fabulous day!

PS...I promise this should be my last rant about blog ads...I have no idea why I have such a bee in my bonnet about it! 

The Power of Walmart

The weather here has been less than stellar for most of the summer. On one hand it means we don't get to enjoy the pool as much and my tan is not nearly as dark as it usually is at this time of year. On the other hand I have been able to get a jump on my Autumn organizing a bit early.

Yes I don't do spring cleaning...I do Autumn organizing. Every September as the air adopts that familiar crispness and the leaves begin to change I am seized by the need to reorganize my house. Since it has felt like Autumn for the last few weeks I have been getting the itch to clean out closets and organize drawers!

This weekend I decided I needed some more clear bins for the storage room in the basement. An ongoing project has been getting all of our possessions into clear, waterproof bins and out of moving boxes. Let's not even begin to discuss the fact we have lived here for 3 years and still have things in moving boxes - my defence will always be: We bought a fixer upper!

So, off I went to Walmart. Please don't attack me for this. I live in a small town and my shopping options are limited. We don't have the luxury of Ikea or any other big housewares stores but we do have a HUGE Walmart just 5 minutes away.

I got the bins I wanted, kind of. They didn't have the size I wanted but they did have the same style so I grabbed 8 of them, put them in my cart and headed to the electronics department to see if I could find sleeves for cds and dvds. Would you believe this is something Walmart doesn't carry?

As I was at the very back of the store looking at dvds suddenly...the power went out. The lights all went off and we were all standing in a big, dark, silent Walmart. Everyone stood there in stunned silence - really! After about 10 seconds the murmuring started. We were all waiting for the lights to come back on so we could carry on shopping in our suburban comfort.

Now let me say this about Canadians. We don't loot. We don't riot. And, we certainly don't panic. Everyone in the store just calmly made their way to the front of the store where the big windows provided all of the light us hearty Canadians need!

Thrown together by circumstance the scene took on a festive feeling. Adults making faces for small children who were afraid of the thunder - it turns out a huge storm had knocked out the power for a very large area of town - people suggesting we hit the snack aisle, and mostly laughing as we compared this to the movie Where the Heart is.

People were abandoning their carts and making their way out of the store. I don't blame them to be honest. But I had come all the way here for ONE thing! Well, 8 of the same thing. I was not leaving empty handed! I decided to wait it out and hopefully power would be restored soon. So I waited. And Waited. And waited.

A little girl in a cart behind me started crying. The thunder was very loud and she was scared. Heck I was starting to get a bit edgy myself! What if it was hours before the power came back on? The poor little girl had one thing too: a dvd of Nemo. Her mom and I had the same look on our faces. The look that says 'I did not drag myself here on a Sunday morning to leave without what I came for!'.

A few minutes later a Walmart employee comes to the crowd gathered by the door and says in a very matter-of-fact tone 'The tills are still working'. Huh?? Huh?? We have all been standing here waiting and the tills have been working all along?!!?!!? That's when it got a bit nutty. Everyone just wanted to get out of there! You see, we Canadians will always make the best of a bad situation - to be honest I am surprised we hadn't started singing camp songs by this point! But given a chance to get out of a bad situation it is every Canadian for them self!

The charge to the cash desks looked a bit like how I imagine the running of the bulls would, complete with a blue-vested Walmart employee rushing to get out of the way while still tempting the carts to run her over!

Yes, the entire town was blacked out, no traffic lights, all the stores were closed, the rain was coming down in sheets, the thunder sounded like bombs going off and yet, Walmart had tills and ATM machines running on back up power.

I guess Walmart has one policy - Dont let them leave empty handed. Even in the dark with an entire town shut down by a storm, Walmart was unwilling to lose a single customer. I got in line and quickly got my clear storage bins scanned and paid for - heck I even got some cash as well! Amazing eh! That's the power of Walmart!