Random Ramblings 2018

Happy New Year! Even though we're now into the second week of 2018, since this is my first post of the year, I find it completely appropriate to include a Happy New Year message. Here are some things that have occurred recently:

* The Moose is 6 years old, and I was really excited to show him Star Wars. Unfortunately, he wasn't really into the movie, and we only made it through about 35 minutes. I probably didn't sell the movie enough to him, but I'm putting some of the blame on TNT. The station had the film available for free via On Demand, which was great, but you're not able to fast-forward during the broadcast. Every 15 minutes or so, TNT interrupted the movie to show commercials of TNT shows. Every single TNT show, with the exception of the NBA on TNT, features characters with guns. While I know there are lightsabers and phasers in Star Wars, the TNT shows/commercials are definitely not geared for 6 year olds.

* Recently, as I was changing the diaper of three month old Luigi, he had a major spit up when I started to pick him up. Based on the position of his face, the spit up started going right towards one of his eyes. My natural reaction was to warn Luigi to close his eyes. Of course, since he is still an infant, he had no concept of what I was frantically screaming about and was completely unfazed by any of this as I had to go into clean up mode.

* I've written about my love of Wegmans many times over the years. For some dumb reason, I decided to go grocery shopping on both Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. Although I had trouble finding parking on both occasions and the store was as crowded as I've seen it, all 23 check out lines were open and moved very quickly.

* Meanwhile, I went to Safeway recently since they had several great deals. On a weekend morning, the store had 1 register open. One!?!!? Unless I'm in a hurry or only have one item, I try to avoid the self-checkout lines. I find that I often have trouble scanning items or am buying items (medicine or alcohol) that require assistance. Plus, I want to go to aisles with cashiers to help preserve these jobs. So at Safeway, with one aisle open, the staff actually told me to go to self-checkout because there was a line. I don't understand how that store operates.

* I've also started to go to Aldi (or Aldi's in my mind) on occasion since they have ridiculous prices on their brand items. Recently, I purchased dishwasher detergent that said "compare to Cascade" on the packaging. It went poorly. All of the glasses, plates, silverware, etc. had a filmy finish. I ran the dishwasher again with the same detergent with the same result. Then, I ran the dishwasher on a rinse cycle. Then, I bought our normal detergent, but the filmy finish remained.

Finally, I got vinegar and that seemed to solve the problem. I compared Aldi's dishwasher detergent to Cascade and learned that there really is no comparison. Oh, I've also discovered that one of the ways that Aldi's has inexpensive products is because they don't seem to use heat in their stores. It was single digit temperatures over the weekend in Northern Virginia, and the store couldn't have been much warmer than that.

* I'll end with this. Pedro Tulo (age 3) has a catchphrase. He says "Everybody knows that" several times per day with no context and with nothing to do with any type of conversation. I have no idea where he got this.