August 11th, 2010 by Erin

On my way home from the gym, I pass through an intersection that has a fire station on the corner.  The other day, there were three firemen out on each median at the intersection, wearing their helmets and fireman’s pants over t-shirts.  They each had a fireman’s boot and a sign with the MDA logo that said “Fill the boot for Jerry [Lewis]‘s kids!”  They seemed to get quite a reaction, much more so than the average homeless person standing on the median with a cardboard sign.  People were honking and putting money in the boots left and right (get it? they had left boots and right boots, ha!).  Maybe it was the tight t-shirts?

They were out again today, and I thought I could probably spare a dollar.  The only problem: no small bills in my wallet.  The fireman that approached me noticed that I was rifling through the receipts looking for something donate-able and said don’t worry about it, if you’ve got some change in there, that’s enough to help.  So I dumped a palmful of change in the boot and got a nifty sticker, which made me feel like I’d done my good deed for the day.

Muscular dystrophy research is not something I would typically donate to.  I’d more likely give to cancer or heart disease, and I donate used items I no longer want to an organization that provides support to battered women.  But apparently a few firemen can sway my giving trends, at least for a few cents.  What kind of charitable organizations do you support?  What kind of thing would tempt to you expand your giving horizons?

© 2010 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

December 14th, 2009 by Erin

Steve and I took a trip to the grocery store yesterday evening.  It was pretty uneventful, until we got home and I tried to lift one of the bags out of the trunk of my car and it nearly ripped my arm off due to its excessive weight.  It contained one large jar of pickles, three jars of pasta sauce, and one bottle of olive oil.  The contents weighed in at 11 and a half pounds, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it sure felt like a lot.  Not to mention the fact that the glass jars could very well have banged together and shattered, leaving my car a mess. 

I do take some care myself when I put my groceries up on the conveyor belt at the checkout.  I try to group like items together, so frozen or refrigerated items will stay colder since they are all grouped together.  I also try to put the heavy stuff on first, since it should go at the bottom of the bags, and the delicate stuff, like bread, eggs, and chips, last so that it goes on the top of the bags.  Seems like they often don’t end up this way in the bags, though.  I often end up starting to bag my own groceries when there are no baggers around, and I’ll admit it’s not as easy as it looks, but it’s not that hard either, and I’m pretty sure if I did it every day I could get the hang of it and make smart decisions about how I group items. 

So, should I be able to expect my bagger to combine items wisely, or should I just be happy he double-bagged all those heavy jars?

September 1st, 2009 by Erin

Steve and I each spent a good portion of this past weekend working, so we did not get a whole lot done around the house, other than some general cleaning and making the place ready for some dinner guests.  We did close out our weekend with a quick trip to Home Depot, though.  We ran out of painters tape several weeks ago, so we grabbed a couple of rolls of that.  We also needed some lengthy trimmers to neaten up some trees in the front yard we can’t reach. 

We also wanted to look at bathroom fixtures, specifically to replace the gold-toned fixtures in the downstairs bathroom we just finished painting.  We looked at the displays and picked one out, but there were none left on the shelf indicated by the display.  I searched for someone to ask if everything they had was out on the shelf, but I couldn’t find anyone.  We went and did some other things, intending to come back later and see if we might have better luck.

While Steve examined some energy efficient light bulbs, I went back to the plumbing section.  Still no one there.  I went another aisle over and finally found an employee, who was fixing her hair.  I asked her if she could help me track down a plumbing fixture that did not appear to be on the shelf, to which she responded “oh, I don’t know nothing about plumbing.”  I realize she did state she had knowledge of the plumbing section, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what she meant.  I asked if she could help me find someone that did know about plumbing.  She said, “oh, I don’t know.”  And continued to fix her hair.  I looked at her for a second, expecting her to go on and suggest where I should look or who I should talk to, but she didn’t.  I turned and walked away and she didn’t say a thing. 

My next step was to press the button in the plumbing section that says “press for help.”  I hadn’t gone that route to begin with because I did not expect anyone would actually respond to it, and sure enough no one did respond.

Just as I was about to give up, an employee walked by the end of the aisle with a full shopping cart, I assume putting items back on their assigned shelves.  She clearly did not want to help me either.  I finally said, “look, I just want to know if you have any more of these in stock.  I can’t believe there is nobody here that knows how to find out.”  She walked over to the computer and 15 seconds later I had my answer: no. 

So we left without a new faucet, and determined to buy a new faucet somewhere else.  Unfortunately, this is not the first time I have had this problem at Home Depot.  Despite the safety orange aprons the employees sport, they are hard to find, and when you do find one, they inevitably will know nothing about the product you are looking for.  Steve says that’s why he prefers OSH or Ace, because the employees at those stores tend to know what they are talking about.  I guess to get the Home Depot savings, you are sacrificing on service.  Is it worth it?

August 25th, 2009 by Erin

Yesterday, from my office window, I saw a huge plume of smoke billowing from behind the high-rise across the street.  Eager for a break from the grind, I jumped up from my desk and walked down the hall to see if I could get a better view.  Sure enough, our office turned out to be prime viewing real estate.  We could see smoke, fire trucks and ladders, fire fighters on the roofs, actual flames, and eventually functioning fire hoses.  So that was a bit of excitement in an otherwise typical day at the office. 

Digression:  Someone forwarded me a short online breaking news story on the incident as it was happening.  Not a whole lot of interesting information, two alarm fire, the fire department is responding, no further comments given, blah blah blah.   But here’s the kicker, “a man who answered the phone at Tadich Grill confirmed that the building was on fire.”  Excuse me?  The building is on fire and this guy is still inside answering the phones?

So, the real point of this post: we don’t really have functioning smoke detectors in our house right now.  Of course, watching someone else’s property burst into flames made me think of it.  If I recall correctly, the smoke detectors were disabled when we moved in, and we found out why when we enabled them and tried to cook dinner.  We didn’t even burn anything, but those alarms started wailing, and they are not easy to turn off.  Steve has mentioned replacing them on a couple of occasions.  Needless to say, this is now going to the top of our to do list.

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

August 24th, 2009 by Erin

This weekend felt extremely busy, but looking back it does not seem like we did all that much.

Saturday we finally got out and tested the sprinkler system.  The prior owner had mapped it out for us, but strangely lost the map prior to moving out.  So we’ve been watering by hand since we move in back in April, which not surprisingly has been a bit sporadic and some of our plants are starting to show it.  Saturday morning, Steve went on to Google maps and printed a satelite photo of the house.  We started with zone one on our sprinkler box and started filling in the map.  The box has the capability to handle 18 zones, 8 through 18 of which currently do absolutely nothing as far as we can tell.  Also, none of them control the backyard, which clearly has a drip system throughout.  We figured out later that there is a hose that connects to the drip system and apparently the prior owner just hooked it up manually to the spigot on the side of the house whenever she did that watering.  In any event, the drip hoses have seen better days.  There are multiple splits in the main line and almost nothing comes out the actual drip points, so it’s going to need some overhauling. 

Saturday afternoon, we went shopping for a birthday present for our now 5-year-old friend, Abby.  As much as I loved Toys ‘r’ Us when I was a kid, I really dislike it now.  I never imagined it would be so hard to shop for a 5-year-old!  We picked out something we hoped she would like and moved on to our next errands: JC Penney to check out window treatments and Home Depot for some yard stuff. 

Penney’s was kind of a disappointment.  We have tall ceilings in our family room, so we needed some lengthy curtains, and it seemed they mostly only had standard 84 inch panels, which was too short.  But still, we got an idea of what they had, and were able to order some online later that evening.  I’ve had a backache for the past few days and I needed to go home and lay down, so we skipped HD. 

Sunday we spent an awful lot of time doing just general chores, which had been put off all week long (we should know better).  Then, of course, the birthday party, and finally home to relax.  Sort of.  I did not feel like watching my sixth auto race of the weekend, so I pulled out our leftover paint and slapped a coat on the upstairs bathroom while Steve watched Indy car from Sears Point Raceway.  Probably not the best thing for my back, but really there is only so much racing I can take. 

And that’s about it.  I’m certain there will be much more to come on the sprinkler system, as that needs a lot of work.  And I’ve been taking pictures of the bathroom as I go, so I’ll be posting those as soon as I can download them from my camera and re-size them for posting.  Because I know the three of you reading this are on the edge of your seat just waiting to see our upstairs bathroom.

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

August 4th, 2009 by Erin

This weekend was a whirlwind of activity. Steve and I took my parents to visit his parents in Santa Rosa. Our itinerary was packed, starting with a trip to Traverso’s, a local family owned and operated gourmet food and wine store that has been a Santa Rosa fixture for over 80 years. The store recently moved, and Steve and I had yet to visit the new location, and my parents had never been there at all.   The store is packed with interesting imported foods and wines, not to mention an amazing deli and cheese selection.  We chatted with some of the Traverso family in the store that day, Sandy, George, Mike, and Bill, who are long-time friends of Steve’s family, and picked up some made-to-order sandwiches for a picnic lunch.

Next stop on our itinerary: Korbel. Korbel’s grounds are beautiful, and the tour is pretty interesting as well. It takes you through the history of the company, which started out in the business of making cigar boxes, not champagne, and the methode champagnoise process of making champagne (mostly as it was done many years ago, without the automation that is certainly used now).

 At the end of the tour, groups are taken to an outdoor tasting area, where they can sample four selected champagnes and one additional taste of their own choosing, which is not limited to champagne, but can be one of Korbel’s other offerings including several brandies, fortified wines, and still wines.

The burning question: why can Korbel call its product champagne when it is not from the Champagne region of France?  Virtually all California sparkling wines are labeled as just that, sparkling wines.  Apparently, though, Korbel has special permission from French wine making authorities to style their product as champagne because the company has been around for so long and because it uses the methode champagnoise.

After finishing up at Korbel, we were pretty hungry, so we headed over to Armstrong Woods for our picnic lunch.  We ate in a convenient picnic area and then took a little walk to check out some of the old-growth redwoods.  The “Colonel Armstrong” tree, named after Colonel James Armstrong, who set aside the area as a “natural park and botanical garden,”  is over 1,400 years old.  Almost as old is the “Parson Jones” tree, which reaches over 310 feet high.  After some fruitless searching and throwing in the towel, we stumbled across the “Icicle Tree,” which was at one time covered with burls resembling icicles.  Unfortunately, many, if not most, of the burls have been destroyed by vandals, so I didn’t think it looked much like it was covered with icicles.

As if that wasn’t enough activity for one day, we then headed off to the Sonoma County Fair.  For us, the Hall of Flowers was the main attraction. 

This year, local professional florists, nurseries, and landscapers created some amazing displays focused on a dinosaur theme. 

Of course, we also spent some time viewing the fine art exhibition, and specifically the photography, and took a stroll down the midway, where Steve and I enjoyed some tasty caramel apples.  We didn’t have a chance to look at any of the animals, but we could definitely smell them. Overall, a fun weekend.

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

April 27th, 2009 by Erin

Picture it: it’s Friday night and two attractive newlyweds are looking for something to do.  The obvious choice?  Costco. 

The Holy Grail of bulk shopping.

Steve and I can make an evening out of going to Costco.  We start with dinner at the snack bar, where you can get a big hot dog and a soda with unlimited refills for a buck fifty.  It’s the best deal in town.

My naked dog.

S's "loaded" dog. They ran out of onions!

Typically I think of a Costco evening as a cheap date.  We get dinner for two and an evening of entertainment for only $3!  I don’t usually factor in the money we spend on the items purchased during the “date” because usually they are things that we need or will use in any event.   We dropped over $350 this time though!  We did save a bundle with a rebate from using a Costco AmEx and with store coupons, but we also made a couple of impulse buys.  We got an oversized king down alternative comforter, which we will need when we finally get around to picking out my in-laws’ wedding gift: a new bed.  We also bought a deep saute pan.  We had one on our wedding registry, but when I went to complete it I learned that they actually don’t make that pan anymore, which could be why we did not receive it.  Thanks for the heads up, C&B!  But I digress . . .

The point is, if you take into account what we spent shopping, we would have been better off doing dinner and a movie or something like that.  But then we’d probably end up at Costco on the weekend anyway, so maybe it is a frugal activity.

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved