Buried by Time

Well, we aren't really super pink.  That monster snow storm?  The one where Central PA was the bullseye in the epicenter?  That little pussy cat was anything but epic.  Oh, sure, we did get a lot of snow, but no where near 24 inches.  20 inches?  Nah.  At best we ended up with around 10 inches of light, fluffy snow.  And here I was planning on taking a personal day.  Well, it looks like that's not going to happen.  This is what it looks like from my front porch.

I did get an email from the people delivering my treadmill letting me know there was a possibility of it being delayed.  How could it be delayed when they haven't even called to set up a delivery date.  The location upstairs is ready and waiting, however, I'm betting I'll have to wait until after Christmas, unless they can get it here on Monday or Thursday.

Those qanon Cracker Jack Crazies are so pissed at Moscow Mitch they're threatening to leave the GOP.  Personally, I don't think their numbers are that great, but let's be honest, any loss for the Republican party is a gain for Democracy.  They don't understand their trendy conspiracy theory, the one where their Idiot Jerk is holy will fade.  Time will bury them in obscurity... something they truly deserve.  Four years from now they will be nothing more than an embracing race track on the dirty underwear of the GOP.

And what about all those who don't want to take the Covid Vaccine?  This is how evolution works.  Those who can adapt survive, those run around shrieking "what's in it?"  They'll die off.  Sure it will take a little time, but that's how it works.  Here today, gone tomorrow... or maybe the next day after that.  

Out of the Box

Well it's Wednesday and I'm heading back to work today.  Ho Hum.
I was supposed to get my desk yesterday and... well, the delivery guys had taken it off of their truck and had it sitting in it's packaging in my driveway  But then a problem cropped up.  The desk, as advertised, is 30 inches high,  30 inches wide, and 60 inches long.  My front doorway is 31 inches wide.  It's a normal front door, in fact most front doors are between 30 and 32 inches wide.  If the front door needs to be used by a person with a disability it needs to be 36 inches wide.  As I said, my front door is 31 inches wide.  The packaging for the desk, however, is 33 inches wide.  My first thought was "what problem, it's 30 inches wide, you take it out of the box."  But then the delivery guy who's been on the phone with his boss says to me "my boss says we can't take it our of the box."  Silly me, I should have realized taking it out of the box would be unpackaging, and these guys are paid deliver.  We have this problem from time to time at the orange home improvement retail giant I work for: delivery people who never do anything other than deliver.  At times they leave things, like dishwashers and refrigerators and boxes of hardwood flooring sitting in a driveway because for them, that's the definition of delivery.  Now, the driver today did say "I can leave it for you, but it's really heavy, I mean really heavy."  Of course it's heavy, it's solid wood and weighs in at 275 pounds.  And where were they going to leave it, on the sidewalk?  The box was too big for my front porch.  I'd never be able to get out of my front door.  So he says "you can refuse it and we'll take it back," and that's what I did.
Of course I immediately contacted Cymax, they're the middle men between myself and Hooker Furniture, and informed them that they needed to issue me a $2300 credit because the delivery guys refused to take the desk out of the box.  Then I contacted Amazon, because Cymax is one of their 3rd party vendors, and let them know I had not accepted delivery because the delivery guys refused to take the desk out of the box.  Naturally, Amazon notified Cymax about the problem and told them to give me a phone call... which I still have not received.
Later, while texting a friend, he asked if I thought Cymax was really going to take that kind of a financial hit.  They not only lose the sale of the desk, they still have to pay the freight charges.  I know that at my store when something goes this wrong with a delivery, we go out of our way to make it right.  At this point, however, I don't know if there is a way to fix this.  The delivery agent they hired delivers packages, not furniture, and because of that will never take the desk out of the box.

In the Home of the Enemy

Yesterday, when I got to work, I was told I needed to do some deliveries.  Fun, eh?  Deliveries happen every now and then.  Something gets delivered wrong and we have to replace it, or, as in yesterday's case, the delivery truck could not deliver the flooring this customer had ordered.  Why not?  Because the customer lived out in the friggin' boonies.  Translation?  A mile and a half from the customer's home we turned left onto a one lane, strip of black top which was supposed to pass for a road.  At the end of that mile and a half there was a driveway, gravel with bits and pieces of what may have one time been black top, which wound up a steep hill for another 800 feet.
I parked our small truck in front of the open garage door and walked to the front door (no sidewalk) while the associate with me started tearing the shrink wrap off the pallet of flooring.  I knocked and some kid answered and he told me to bring it in through the garage.  As I carried the first box in through I could feel my skin begin to crawl.  There, to my left, on the floor, were 2 Trump / Pence signs.  I was in the home of the enemy... a Trumplodite!
He was big and fat, at least 6'3" and 300 pounds, probably more, and very, very white.  And while for the most part the house was clean, it was also very cluttered.  The coffee table was stacked with NFL magazines, and Country magazines, and newsletters, and there coats and jackets tossed over the backs of furniture.  Two computer keyboards and a tablet lay against the side of the sofa.  And there were framed photographs all over the place. Seriously.  This Trumplodite's older son must have been a football player in high school since there was a wall covered with framed pictures of him in his uniform, and his prom date, and the prom invitation and football certificates - in all, probably around 30 of them.  One wall was dedicated to the 85" television on which NFL Today was playing.

While this is a facsimile picture, it was pretty much like this

From the living room you could see into a 'home office,' and I know he would hate for me to say this, but I'm using that word liberally since there were stacks of paper all over the place, and I'm talking stacks here, not 1" or 2" piles, but 6" - 8" stacks, a lot of them.

And this Trumplodite was not the most friendly of people, the original delivery truck couldn't get to his house because of it's location... and it was their fault, so I got stuck delivering it in a smaller truck, which meant the delivery was late and that (in his mind) was my fault.  In fact, as I was carrying in boxes of faux hardwood flooring, I realized that in this guy's mind everything he didn't like was someone else's fault.

Still, I am happy to say I survived my brief stint in the Home of the Enemy, and I suspect that the black hatred seething around his head will only grow after Tuesday's election.  He's going to need to blame somebody.

DiGiornio - Cardboard Convenience

When I'm feeling in the mood for pizza, or Stromboli I usually place an order with my local pizzeria, Al's; the cost is reasonable and I can do it online.  Occasionally  I'll buy a Dr. Oeteker flat pizza from my local Giant supermarket since they have a lot of taste and don't bloat you up.  Last night, for some reason I can only blame on mass marketing, I bought a DiGiorno pizza.  We've all seen the ads: Tastes like delivery but it's not, it's Digiorno."  Those ads LIE! (notice the caps).  Now I'm not a great cook, will never be a Chef, or appear on a cooking show, but I do know my way around a kitchen well enough to follow package directions.  The first thing I noticed looking for the directions was a little blurb noting the "wings" included with the pizza "contained no wing meat."  Translation: processed chicken meat from any where, and every where else on the bird except the wings.  I don't eat processed meats because they include a lot of things I don't normally eat, like gristle, and ground bone.  Still I followed the directions and baked them discovered - they had no chicken taste.  This is how I discovered the true reason for the barbecue sauce that was included: it was not supposed to be used as a condiment but rather as a substitute for flavor.

Tastes like cardboard, but it's not

 

As for the pizza, while you could taste the toppings the crust, itself, was far more similar to cardboard than anything else I've eaten in some time.  When I pick up a pizza from Al's it's not stiff, and by stiff I mean that when holding the edge of the crust between my thumb and forefinger, the crust remains horizontal to the table top.  Good pizza crust, unless it's a thin crust, should be supple.  There should be some folding, bendiness about it which lets you chew it in your mouth.  Believe me when I tell you eating the DiGirono Pizza Supreme was like gnawing on cardboard, not that I've ever gnawed on cardboard but believe me as I worked my teeth to the max, that is exactly what I kept thinking.  Of course, when I bought it I knew it was going to end up being nothing more then a frozen pizza, just like every other frozen pizza out there in grocery land.  Sadly they don't even provide much sustenance for the poor since, at least as far as my wallet is concerned, they're fairly pricey.  Just think, for $2 more I could have had a large, hand made Stromboli from Al's or a pizza of the same size.  Face it, the real reason DiGiorno pizzas are popular is not because they taste like delivery pizza, it's because they're convenient as hell.  You can pull them from the freezer, pop them in the oven, and eat 20 minutes later.  That's a sacrifice a lot of people chose to make: cardboard convenience over quality.  I will probably never, ever purchase a DiGirono pizza again.  Thank God for local piaaerias!