Archive: Opinions

As far as I'm concerned, store managers come to my house to see what I like so they can stop carrying it.  It doesn't matter what it is.  Once I have found a brand I like it dissapears from local store shelves faster than you can say Houdini.  I am such a sap that every time this happens I go to multiple stores (I don't particularly like shopping, so this isn't fun for me) to find whatever it is absent from otherwise well-stocked shelves.  So I started taking matters into my own hands.

I want to support local stores, even the big box stores we have in Ithaca, because there is nothing like being able to drive to a nearby store and get what you want when you need it.  For example, I seem to burn out routers in my house at the rate of one every one or two years.  If I had to wait for delivery from an Internet purchase I wouldn't have Internet for days until the new router were delivered, not a good option when you write for an online newspaper.  Besides, how would I order a new router on the Internet if I didn't have Internet?

Driving the few miles to Best Buy means I can have the Internet back up and running in less than an hour.  Stuff like that is important.  So I try to buy things in local stores when I can, to do my part to keep them open for when I really need them.

But other things disappear from my life despite my best efforts to find them in local stores.  Like cranberry quick bread or gingerbread mix.  They both seem to have disappeared from Ithaca at some point.  I asked the manager at Lansing Market if he would stock them, and he told me that he would try, but they are seasonal products.

Seasonal products?  OK, I can see how you might consider them seasonal, although I think a nice hot square of gingerbread with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top is just as delicious in May as it is at Halloween.  And cranberry bread is the same.  Besides, Thanksgiving IS the season for cranberry stuff, and I couldn't find my beloved quick bread mix at Tops or Lansing Market or anywhere this week!  Oh, they had pumpkin.  And they had banana.  But cranberry from the bogs of my Massachusetts youth?  No way, no how, no where!

So I found a Web site called BuyTheCase.net, which has these products if you are willing to buy a case of them.  Get it?  This particular site doesn't have the best prices I found anwhere on the 'net, but they are located in neighboring Massachusetts and the standard shipping option had me rolling in cranberry and ginger bread mixes in three days.

Then there is my instant coffee caper.  My wife makes great real coffee, but electric coffee makers just don't like me.  Once when my parents visited I tried making coffee.  On the first day: the machine overflowed and dumped coffee all over the counter and the kitchen floor.  The next day I forgot to put the water in, and no matter how many times I pressed the 'on' button no coffee came out.  On the third day my father wryly suggested that my wife make the coffee from now on.

But we have busy and different schedules, so I finally decided that I am not so much a real-coffee snob that I can't make instant coffee for myself.  Putting a spoonful of instant coffee into a cup and pouring boiling water over it is something I know how to do.  I like regular coffee in the morning, but if I have caffeine after noon I have trouble sleeping at night.  The thing is... instant decaffeinated coffee isn't so good.

I figured instant coffee is instant coffee, so I got a little jar of Sure Fine brand.  Suffice it to say it wasn't.  Fine.  So I tried Maxwell House instant decaf.  That's supposed to be good to the last drop, right?  It wasn't entirely repulsive, but it didn't taste like coffee.

So I found those little tubes at Tops that have a teaspoon's worth of instant coffee and tried a few different brands.  The best tasting one was Taster's Choice.  Guess what?  The stores in Ithaca don't stock Taster's Choice decaffeinated instant coffee in anything but little tubes.  So I ordered a case of the jars from my Massachusetts friends.  It was expensive to buy that much all at once, but I won't have to buy another case until I'm 92. 

Meanwhile my wife had brought home a jar of French Roast Tasters Choice -- with caffeine -- from a local store.  I thought it tasted a lot better than the other brands I had been drinking.  Could I find it in our local stores?  Evidently all the managers had come to my house in the dead of night, seen that jar of French Roast in the cabinet above the toaster oven, and concluded that I like it.  So they stoped carrying it.

I found it on Walmart.com, so it seemed logical that they'd have it at the Ithaca Walmart.  So last Saturday that's where I was.  Now, I don't like big stores.  If I'm going to get that much exercise I want to see some pretty scenery along the way.  But I traipsed across that Walmart to the coffee aisle, and guess what?  No French Roast! 

Walmart.com says my French Roast will arrive here by FedEx on December 3rd.  They're springing for the shipping because I bought a case-worth of coffee.

My son started mocking me for stocking products when he discovered my cache of Tone soap, a half dozen or more six-packs, on the top shelf of my bedroom closet.  He just shook his head in disbelief when he saw my case of cranberry bread mix.  And don't even talk to me about toilet paper.  I get those big honking 36 roll packs and my family uses the stuff faster than a drunk guzzles howlers in a beer factory.  I'm not going to say what brand of toilet paper I like.  I don't want to make it easy for those night stalking store managers.

This brings me to Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  My wife says that people who stand in line to get bargains on Black Friday are amateurs.  She says you can get much better deals by keeping your eyes open throughout the year, comparison shopping, and of course, checking for good deals on the Web.  Well, we want our stores to be here for when we need a router in a hurry.  But what's the point of a Black Friday or a Cyber Monday if you don't get great deals?

So my advice is to go to those stores, though maybe not on the most ridiculous shopping day of the year.  Get stuff you need and keep in mind that those good prices on the Internet may not be as different from local store prices after shipping and handling charges are added. 

If that doesn't work out, Cyber Monday is a good option as long as you compare the so-called great deals on that day with prices you could find on the other 364 days of the year.

And if you can't find the exact thing you like, don't dispair.  Every Friday is black if you can't get something you really, really like.  Just remember if you can't find one here in Ithaca you can always order a case of it online.

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