Hell, no, Pix.

I think I will introduce my mother to Smash today, she likes musicals.

Jackhammers should not be allowed at 9am on a Saturday.

Yeah, why does the Migraine Inducing Lobby have so much power in America anyway?

And they are quite literally outside our bedroom window because our landlord hired the plumber to redo the vent on our gas water heater...which needs to be done and is good that it's being fixed but oh dear god too early on a Saturday.

Impressively, ND has fallen back asleep. I swear, I want that superpower.

I think the nearest Costco is a 40 minute drive, which would render any savings I'm likely to see on gas moot. If the put n the one they're talking about in the town next door I might consider it.

Jackhammers should not be allowed at 9am on a Saturday.

I think that's against the law.

Or should be.

Sounds like a felony.

I have a Costco about a mile away, but I never really used enough in the couple of years we were members to make it worth keeping up. We do leech off the in-laws for big bags of coffee and the occasional party run; it's handy to stock up periodically, but wasn't a regular enough thing for us to make up the membership cost.

(Calli, is my Costco really 40 minutes for you? Or are you thinking of another? Alternately, do I drive that fast?)

One other thing about Costco. According to the guy who wrote extra virgin the Kirkland brand of olive oil is extremely high quality, not only free of motor oil, cotton seed oil and other adulterants (sadly not true of a lot of olive oils) but doing everything else right. So another plus. Says the guy who stopped going to Costco.

not only free of motor oil, cotton seed oil and other adulterants (sadly not true of a lot of olive oils)

MOTOR OIL? The hell?

yeah, some of the olive oils tested positive for motor oil. I've gotten really careful about which olive oils I buy since I read that. The EU went through some of the same deregulatory fever we did, so there are huge scandals as to what is often in olive oil these days.

I went to the BevMo sale yesterday and now I have almost 2 cases of wine in my closet. But I can never remember how much I spent on anything and I have a hard time remembering the wines I really liked.

I was there, too! When I get home, I take a pencil and and receipt and write the price on the back label of each wine bottle before I put the wine in the rack. And when I am trying a new wine and I really love it, I simply take a photo of the label with my phone. That way I know what I am looking for next time. I've checked out a bunch of wine apps but haven't found the perfect one just yet. What I want is to be able to take a bar code scan, a pic of the label, rate it on a points system, AND write notes about it. I can usually find some of these options but not all in one app.

Ita, I too LOVE Shazaam! It even works for a lot of orchestral music which is really helpful when I hear something beautiful in a random movie scene (at home) or a commercial.

ETA: Lee, I bought my Dyson at Costco; is that what you're thinking of getting?

I know I've gone on and on about my love of Costco before. It's not just the savings; they really are a cut above the rest in terms of how they treat employees. Workers at Trader Joes and Costco are consistently surveyed and rank their companies very high. And anecdotally speaking, I've had good friends at both places and as far as retail goes, it's not a bad job.