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.

Hey, someone made me a website: [link].

Have you seen Robot Chicken's Ode to the Nut Shot? [link]

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

Sorry. That's probably my fault, somehow.

My lord! The project checkpoint meeting at 9:30 went fine. A false alarm, but quickly resolved, and no one is the worse for it.

I am so behind that I Shazam all the time. My rental car used to default to the radio, and apparently 104.3 plays some new music I don't hate. Still, as long as there are ads and DJs I'm unlikely to have the patience to listen to the radio, but that doesn't mean I can't grab new stuff somehow.

I do use it for TV music the most, though. It's much simpler than googling the lyrics like I used to.

My fingers are so crossed tonight's implementation really ends by 3:30AM like planned. PLEASE GOD PLEASE. However, I'm not sure if *some* team members have been attacked by the stupids, or what. I asked you specifically to read the task list and check the items with your name, so why do you only work out *now* you have things to do today?

I have to admit, I'm enough of a bitch that I like it better when the business has enough skin in the game to get what IT is doing for them, and when we're doing it. I think it's appropriate for them to know we're regularly up at 1AM on the weekends making sure their systems have no interruptions perceptible on the front end. I'm not looking for pity, just awareness.

And if it's *your* big project, I don't actually feel bad asking you every now and again to be there when you need to be to give us the approvals we require to move on. Become a regular, and I'll do my damnedest to get you your sleep, but I do like to pop a cherry.

Apple, please stop with the Siri ads. You're creeping me out. What is "Remind me to do this again" really supposed to mean? Do they have "have a great time on the beach" in their calendar? OR ARE YOU PSYCHIC?

Thank you, Steph. That's the perfect rejoinder to rapey romance guy, who unsurprisingly thinks that nut shots should be off limits in self defense, because they have an impact on fertility. Dude, it's not a back rub. I don't actually care about my attacker's ability to have children beyond wanting to eliminate them from the gene pool. Ergo, not convincing argument against...also, I need stats. Nut stats.

I don't actually care about my attacker's ability to have children beyond wanting to eliminate them from the gene pool.

Sometimes I love you so much it hurts a little bit. But not as much as a nad shot. Or a shock knife, probably.

I'm busy boggling at what I overheard at the gym earlier. Some dude in a tight t-shirt, camo pants, and combat boots had cornered a fat woman (not me) who was zipping along merrily on the elliptical, and started shooting questions at her about her workout, and telling her that she just needed to "get it in the red zone and keep it there." (Which is not what I boggled at.) Then he started talking about food, and how he only eats fish and vegetables, and that, as soon as a slice of white bread hits the stomach, it turns directly into sugar, and then into fat before it moves out of the stomach, and so she should eat wheat bread.

I started laughing, he turned and looked at me, and I waved my book at him (with a skeleton on the cover) and said "Funny book!"

Then he told the woman he was going to start giving personal training sessions ("get it in the red zone and keep it there" [WTF is the Red Zone???]), and all I could think was, oh, I hope you know more about anatomy and physiology than you do about nutrition.

White bread turns into sugar and then fat IN YOUR STOMACH. Yes. Yes it does. But wheat bread is magic and turns into unicorns that poop rainbows. YES IT DOES.