Thursday, November 15, 2007

early afternoon

Happy 10th Anniversary to us!

Today is our 10th anniversary, and it looks like Leigh-Ann’s gonna renew my contract for at least another year.

It’s also my parents’ 55th anniversary, and it looks like they’ll renew for another year too. 

It’s 4am, it’s all I got.  I apologize for not being particularly inspired.  Luckily, a big show of cards and gifts isn’t a requirement around our household…because we don’t have any money this week, so we’ll consider the iPods that we won as our gifts.  Next week, perhaps we’ll go out to dinner or something.

lunch time

David Letterman - What a great employer

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Strike or not, employees of the “Late Show With David Letterman” and the “The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” will be paid through year’s end.  Both are produced by Letterman’s Worldwide Pants banner, which notified employees in New York and Los Angeles that they will be paid regardless of whether the shows return. It would make Worldwide Pants the first known company to guarantee its staff a paycheck during the writers strike.

What a classy move by David Letterman.  He stood by the writers and refused to cross the picket line (as did Jay Leno), and now he’s paying them out of his own pocket for at least six weeks.  On the other side of the coin - Ellen DeGeneres.  Ellen took one day off to supposedly stand by her writers, but she came back the next day.  She took more time off when she was upset about breaking the contract for her adopted dog.  I’ve read quite a bit of interesting talk about how poorly Ellen treats her staff, so I’m not surprised at her behavior.  In fact, the more that I see the real Ellen, the more that I have no desire to watch public funny & nice Ellen.  The contrast is just too great.  The more I read about her, the more I believe that her tears for the dog were just a tantrum of spoiled rich person not getting their way.  The dog was just the object that she wasn’t allowed to control.

A weird thing - I click on a “justify” button for each paragraph I type in my blog.  When I started to write the first paragraph of this entry, I clicked on the “strike” button, which is next to it.  I’ve never clicked on that button before.  My fingers knew that they were going to be talking about the writers’ strike, I guess.

evening

Fresh & Easy - Store Opening Attracts Bored Seniors & Two Lesbians

Before I start my less than thorough review of the new Fresh & Easy on W. Lake Mead in Las Vegas, I’m going to give you a link to an actual review by someone else.  We’ve been waiting for our Fresh & Easy grocery store to open up for months, and we’re no closer to knowing when they’ll start building it than we were then.  However, on the way to the fancy pet food store to get some free cans of Merrick, I went the wrong direction for a block, and Leigh-Ann noticed the Fresh & Easy sign on a building.  I decided to turn around and take a look-see, and lo and behold, the store was open.  It was actually its opening day.  The small parking lot was crazy.  It’s in the heart of retirement city in Summerlin.  There were golf carts (there was a Rolls Royce model driving behind me) in some of the parking spaces.  It took us a while to move to the far end of the parking lot, where we were safe from opening day traffic, because in the first row of the parking lot there was a woman taking forever to back out of her space.  I was ready to give her a break for being old, but no, she was on the phone.  She was holding the phone to her ear, so she only had one hand on the steering wheel, and we all know how difficult it is to manuever out of a space backwards, with only one hand.  She held up at least four cars and one poor woman trying to return her cart.  People that selfish, dangerous, and rude shouldn’t be allowed to drive.

We finally got past Mrs. Selfish Phone Caller and parked near some office buildings in the back of the parking lot.  We decided that we weren’t going to buy anything, we just wanted to look around inside.  It was nuts in there.  It was like “Attack of the Senior Citizens”, and they were armed…with carts.  They ambled (okay, we do too), they blocked aisles (we don’t), and they were totally oblivious when anyone wanted to get by them (we aren’t).  And, we didn’t even have a cart.  Anyway, we browsed through the store to get an idea of what they had.  The first products we saw were the ready-made salads at the front of the store.  They looked different and tasty.  Okay, and expensive.  Then, we walked down the produce aisle, where most of the produce was strangely wrapped in plastic.  Why?  We don’t know.  But, if the produce is good and doesn’t need to be pick through, I have no complaints about it being wrapped up.  At the end of that aisle was the demonstration station (you know, if they don’t have it named that, they should), where they were giving out a free chocolate chip cookie (an average packaged Keebler kind of cookie) and some orange juice.  We turned the corner into the meat section, and before we got too far, we were accosted by a nice gentleman from Fresh & Easy wanting to make sure that we each got a free packet of English Breakfast Tea.  Much appreciated.  Also, the meat looked good - lots of different varieties and some ready to grill combos that we don’t normally see in our stores.  Further down the row, there was fresh whole fish.

The middle section of the store was like a big 7-Eleven, with small packages of toilet paper, paper towels, and very little variety of the basics, which I realize is the point.  Alongside the back of the store, there was a section of ready-made desserts.  From chocolate volcano cakes to fancy cupcakes (like the ones Starbucks used to have…and that we loved), their desserts, if they taste as good as they look, will be our main draw there.  They had some interesting Fresh & Easy labelled frozen dinners that sounded good.  The F&E brand bread looked tasty too - Flax Seed bread, I approve.  Oh yeah, and in the middle of the store, in one of the rows, they had some fresh pizza dough.  It’s something that I would definitely try.

We had appointments today with our pain management doctor, and we generally feel pretty old and worn out when we go there.  “No, these meds didn’t work.  Those meds had bad side effects.  Okay, we’ll take prescriptions for our regular stuff.  See you next month.”  As we leave each month, we have to pay them $95 each, $2280 a year.  That doesn’t include our meds, which are between $300-$600 a month, which is another $7000+ a year.  Ah-ha, so that’s why it’s been hard saving for rainy days.  Anyway, today was an especially bad pain day for both of us, but when we went to Fresh & Easy, we were probably the youngest people in the store, by about 30 years.  I almost felt a little better, until I realized that the old people were much spryer…and that was sad.  Nonetheless, I can’t wait until the Fresh & Easy opens a block away from our house.  We’ll be able to pick the times to shop when it’ll be slow.

There was one funny thing at that store.  There was a tiny Christmas section, with wrapping paper and other odds & ends.  There wasn’t any Hanukkah stuff.  We figured out that they hadn’t really researched their religion demographics.  They’re going to get a crotchety old Jewish woman kvetching about them only having Christmas stuff.  I wish I could be there when it happened.  It was a pretty simple thing that they overlooked, I think.  Aren’t there any Jewish neighborhoods in the UK?

Like I said, if you want a real review about the food at Fresh & Easy, check out the link to Chronicler’s review at the beginning of the entry.  I’m not ambitious enough to do a real review.  That said, I liked the store.  They need a few adjustments, but they have some interesting food.  I don’t know how they’ll compete, being a hybrid of Trader Joe’s and a grocery store, but I guess we’ll soon find out.