Blind Installations

 So, it was an early morning, though not early, early.  Howie's little bladder was full, so at 0500 this morning I found myself standing by the back door as he casually wandered out into the yard and relieved himself.  It was cold, 28 (F), and it was dark.  And when he was finished, he went to find a barter stick.  Yeah, that's right, he's got the barter thing down pat.  He always comes back into the house with either a stick, or a twig, or a chunk of ice, and then stands by the counter waiting to trade his "goods," for either a piece of Puperoni, or a biscuit, or a doggy cookie.  Now, of course, he's sleeping on the bed because... well, I guess he's tired.

I did work yesterday.  Prices are going up.  Blind installations used to cost $119 for 10 blinds, less the $50 measure fee.  Not anymore.  Blind installations now cost $249, and after we deduct the measure fee they now cost $199.  That's extremely pricey if you only want to have 4 or 5 blinds installed, which is the number of blinds most customers have installed.  And where we used to have free carpet installations, we now charge .49 a square foot.  They have dropped the cost of all carpets by that amount, but no one believes this deduction will last too long, maybe two or three months, and then it will disappear.

Because there were so few customers in the store, I managed to get in quite a number of  laps.  On one of them, I swung by the paint desk and was surprised to find that some Crazy person had pushed a religious brochure into "pick up paint here," sign holder.  I did the proper thing by pulling it out.  When I gave to the paint desk associate, she frowned, crumpled it up and threw it away.  This was a good thing.  

For lunch and dinner yesterday I made a Greeky bean salad that turned out to be quite tasty, so tasty, I wrote down the recipe.  

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you've heard me talk about visiting my Giant supermarket.  I'm pleased to say that Giant Grocery is one of those businesses that has not bent to the knee to the Orange Anus and his DEI hatred.

And the tariffs are kind of off for now... at least until April 6, at which time Orangie will decide if he will push them down the world's throat.  Sadly, that doesn't mean that companies are going to proceed with an anticipatory price increase.  Believe me, it's already happening.  What I find fascinating is that the only people claiming that prices will come back down are Conservatives, and I don't doubt that's to tamper down fears that the economy is going to go to Hell.  Believe me, it's going to go to Hell.  The last Republican president to not herald in a shitty economy was Dwight D. Eisenhower.  He was president when I was born.  That's a long time ago.  You'd have thought have so many years Republicans would have learned at least thing about their failed policies.  Of course, Conservatives never learn, that's why their presidents keep repeating the shit show over and over again.