I'll just entertain myself

It is kind of funny to think you would ask someone to join you for dinner and say "I'll just open a few more cans of bread" where you get here

That might be okay if you felt coerced into inviting someone. You're not saying 'no', but it sure doesn't sound inviting.

Ha, it doesn't does it?

Got an invitation by mail to switch my electric service to Reliant. I had to snarf. Threw it away unopened. My wife and I used Reliant for 30 years. Some of the bills got as high as $600. We had the service disconnected for failure to pay a number of times. The one at the meter cutting it off always acted proud and happy to be taking away service from a deadbeat. One day we realized that there were cheaper services we could sign up for. The other day our bill for what would have been at least $300 with Reliant was $125. Hard to believe what a sucker I was. Now they send me offers to return several times a year. All several times I snarf.

I must say that’s really shocking. However, you’re doing a great job at keeping current with prices.

OOOf, that was intentional wasn't it? Sometimes you just crackle and snap.

I hate it when my stores where I shop will take away products that I would buy weekly just to make me substitute products I won't normally buy. If I and enough other customers buy a certain product, it always happens that it becomes unavailable for a month or so.

Yes, it was. You get a charge?

I'm totally grounded.

I really hate that, too. Safeway was bought out by Sobey's and they don't carry the same things or name brands. They sell gyozas but not the sauce. And their 'Asian Aisle' is a joke. You can get rice vinegar but not rice wine vinegar. And no tempera sauce, either. I have to make my own or go to an Asian store. And they have all kinds of chutneys, but not my fave - tamarind. I don't want a cloyingly sweet mango chutney on my samosas. Annoying.

Our Safeway calls it the International Aisle, har har hardy har har. They keep swapping out brand names with store brands and they are just not the same. Especially spices, the store brands stink.

Everything gets blanded down because it's easier for the store, forget about what customers want. I listened to a panel on shopping habits in the US, and the 'experts' say that people like to go to several stores to buy their groceries. Back in the 50's, there was no such thing as a supermarket....you went to the butcher, the bakery, produce stands and fruit stands. The first store I remember as a small girl was Penn Fruit, everything you needed was there. So the butchers, the bakers, vegetable and fruit venders went out of business. Now, the supermarkets only sell the products that move quickly, but for the bean counters that might mean a difference of only 1 or 2 a week. It's really for them to streamline their business for maximum profit, and they gamble the customer will simply settle for a lesser product than they actually want.

Drives me nuts. The customer keeps getting more and more insignificant. People don't shop in several stores because they like it, they do it because that's the only way they can get the products they really want.

Yes, you're right. I've changed things up for our household. I buy my meat, chickens and eggs from a local farm (non-GMO, antibiotics, free range, etc), I visit my local farmers' market for honey, produce, etc., so the only things I get at the supermarkets are dairy and staples. At my local Safeway I can't even find the espresso they used to have, so when I go to Superstore, I buy 6 at a time (love my cappuccinos).

We had Safeways in the Houston area, but they couldn't compete with the likes of Kroger and HEB. After maybe ten years Safeway quietly bought Houston's Randalls and promptly made Randalls irrelevant.

It is getting so every website I visit wants to send me regular emails. Why? Nobody's going to read dozens of repetitive emails every day.

When I check my email it's mostly advertisements. Or politicians asking for money, or certain groups with a cause they want you to give money. I keep hitting unsubscribe, but it doesn't always click right away.

I don't unsubscribe. I just delete. The reason I bother to delete is that I often get email I actually want to read in the junk files. Deleting the crap makes the good ones easier to find.

And you’re quite positive, too.

A big part of what I get is requests for surveys. I swear, if I bought a paper clip from Staples, a week later they would want me to review the paper clip.

I forgot about the surveys....they are getting ridiculous as well. I stopped checking Angie's list because they would nag me after I searched categories. "We noticed you looked at the websites of A, B, C,D, E and F. Has your job been completed, what did you think, did the work force have nice personalities and were any of them Scorpios or Leos? We have heard complaints about the Capricorns, what do you think?" It never ends.

I haven't used Angie's List in years. Maybe that's why.