Tag Archives: Safeway

Heart-Shaped TNT Thursday Rundown

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Happy February, everyone! I hope January was a great beginning to your 2024 and that you are now ready to take on the second month of the year. But first, how about you take on these five topics?…

Scam – I omitted this racket when I wrote about the frustrating practices of grocery stores on Monday, but it deserves mention tonight. Safeway isn’t fooling anyone when they charge a deeply inflated price for a bag of chips but then offer a discounted price…if you buy FOUR of them. What a dishonest, worthless proposition. I found myself with no other choice but to go along with this scam earlier this week. We needed chips for the kids’ lunches and with limited options I wasn’t going to spend $5.69 on a bag of chips so I caved and bought four. I was so mad.

This practice really irks me. As I paced up and down the aisle deciding what to do on Tuesday morning, I took this photo.

These Are Cool – For the first time in my life, I saw these “Exploding Hearts” for the first time. I thought it was a terrific idea! If this is the first time that TNT has made Valentine-themed pop-its, my question is this: What took them so long?! Well, better late than never. I didn’t buy a box but I would be curious to see how “true” the heart shape actually is and whether it packs a louder bang than the original pieces.

I love pop-its and I think these are a great idea.

Sid’s Birthday Cake – Here is Sid’s 32nd birthday cake. As usual, per my wife’s request, it is chocolate cake with chocolate filling and chocolate frosting. Let me now take this moment to reiterate what I have said for the past three years: If you are looking for a superior but affordable cake for any occasion, go with Rosauers. Trust me, Rosauers isn’t your typical grocery store bakery. After all, there is good reason why our good friends selected Rosauers for their wedding cake. You won’t regret ordering from them.

Rosauers always comes through. This is Sid’s most recent birthday cake.

Don’t Mess With Dark Chocolate Day – We have two days to commemorate today. First, it is National Dark Chocolate Day which I find special because my favorite chocolate is dark chocolate. I love the strong, slightly bitter taste. Give me a Hershey’s variety pack and I am picking out the dark chocolate mini bars without hesitation. It is also National Texas Day. Unlike last week where I had a lot of places to rattle off when it came to where I spent time in Florida, I don’t have nearly the track record with Texas. In fact, I can count just two cities that I have spent time in—Denton and Dallas. And although they both start with “D,” they are about as different as you can get. I would like to visit more places in Texas though.

Sloan standing next to an inflatable Dallas Cowboys helmet at the rental car center in Dallas. Can you get more “Dallas” than that? We spent the day exploring the city in January 2022.

Trafficked – I became aware of a television series called “Trafficked” about a week ago. The series, which can be streamed on Hulu, consists of four seasons and investigates various rackets within the global underworld and black market. The host, Mariana van Zeller, is fearless and superb at confronting many of the traffickers across the plethora of different schemes she has infiltrated. There are so many sad yet intriguing topics within the four seasons but the one I just finished was about the illegal ape trade in Congo. The process of kidnapping a baby chimp out of the forests of the country is brutal and cruel. Most of the time, the poachers must kill the entire family to kidnap the young chimp because its parents won’t go quietly as greedy humans take their child. Many of the episodes are tough to watch but it is a reminder of the evil and exploitation that exists in our world.

“Trafficked” is an excellent docu-series. I watch it on Hulu.

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If February seems a little longer this year, there is a reason for that—it is a leap year! From day #1 to day #29, I hope you have an awesome month. Don’t Blink.

Cereal Killer Thursday Rundown

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Happy Friday Eve! Compared to August and September, this month has seemed to fly by for me. Less than two weeks until Halloween. Let’s get started with tonight’s five topics…

Cerealflation – Let me vent for a minute. What you see below is ridiculous and nothing short of highway robbery. The fact that Safeway had the nerve to put a tag underneath those cereal boxes and associate it with a promotion makes me even angrier. How in good conscience can any retailer try to sell a small box of cereal for $6.99? Out of all the products I have seen impacted by inflation and greed over the past couple years, this takes the cake (or the cereal bowl). I will continue to buy our family’s cereal from Grocery Outlet at $.99 per box.

Listen right now: I will NOT pay almost $7 for a box of cereal.

ONE Stadium – On Friday night I took the kids to ONE Stadium, the brand new sports facility that Spokane District 81 built for its schools. Located smack in the middle of downtown, we visited the stadium to watch my alma mater Mead High School play Lewis and Clark High School. Although my Panthers fell short, we still had fun exploring the stadium. Perhaps the coolest feature is the magical scales that you put your concession items on. Once the items are placed, the accurate price is automatically reflected on the screen. Can’t wait to see the epic sporting events that ONE Stadium will hold over the many years to come.

A few photos from our first visit to Spokane’s ONE Stadium, including the scale that instantly tabulated your total.

Cookie Sandwiches – On Tuesday night I decided to whip up a treat for our Engaged Encounter meeting. I opted for chocolate cookie sandwiches. I baked the cookies with my famous cake mix recipe and then put vanilla frosting in the middle. They were a hit as not a single crumb was left.

I baked these for our Engaged Encounter meeting.

Trick-Or-Treat Chart – As we draw closer to Halloween I am sure many of you are starting to stock up on the candy you will pass out to trick-or-treaters. I thought that as you make your candy selections that I would re-share this “How Kids Judge Halloween” graphic that originally appeared in my blog five years ago. It always brings a smile to my face. The category that Sidney and I fall under? None of them! The past few years we have gone over to my parents’ house and helped them pass out candy to the nearly 300 trick-or-treaters who come to their door on any given Halloween. My mom definitely represents “The Trusty Provider” category.

This chart is golden.

Way Too Extreme – I love a good haunted house. Over the years I have heard about these “extreme” haunted houses that require you to sign a waiver and last for hours. It kind of appealed to me but not after the documentary I watched on Hulu this week. Called “Monster Inside: America’s Most Extreme Haunted House,” the film tells the story of the house of horrors that deranged Russ McKamey created. What the “experience” amounted to was Russ basically torturing the people who signed up to do it. There is absolutely no connection to Halloween or anything that resembles a classic haunted house. You won’t believe it until you watch the documentary…I don’t approve.

This documentary was disturbing.

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That will conclude things for this evening. Please continue to pray for peace in the Holy Land and all other war-torn areas. Don’t Blink.

Grocery Store Pumpkin Patches

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Back in my childhood, I remember becoming really excited when a certain something happened in early October. I would feel some type of way when we would pull into the parking lot of our local Albertson’s and see scores of bright orange pumpkins lining the front middle of the store between the two entrances. It mattered to me because, one, it meant Halloween was near, and, two, it was just a welcome sight because it was out of the norm.

When I was a kid, it was always a welcome sight to see the pumpkins outside of the grocery store. On Sunday, my kids played in the Safeway pumpkin patch.

Although most years we were also privileged enough to visit a pumpkin patch at Green Bluff, we always purchased our carving pumpkins at the grocery store. The hunt was always on to find that perfect gourd that was among all the other pumpkins sprawled out on the pavement. Oh, how I loved it.

These days, grocery stores still sell pumpkins outside their front doors but a couple things are different. First, why would these places even consider waiting until the actual month of the holiday to roll out their pumpkins? Now, much like the irrational rush to push Christmas products months in advance, the supermarket pumpkin patches pop up weeks before October arrives.

Second, the variety of pumpkin has exploded from the orange ones to a cornucopia of all shapes, sizes, and colors. White pumpkins, green pumpkins, multi-colored pumpkins, wart-covered pumpkins, and everything else you can think of abound in these displays. To each their own, I guess?

Beau holds a white pumpkin at the Safeway pumpkin patch. They come in all different colors these days.

I let Sloan and Beau play in the Safeway “pumpkin patch” the other day. Except for them trying to pick up pumpkins way too big for them, it was innocent and cheap fun. In fact, it is the perfect way to allow one parent to run inside and do the shopping in peace while the other parent monitors the children frolicking among the squashes, cardboard boxes, and imported hay bales.

Nothing like some cheap entertainment at a makeshift grocery store pumpkin patch.

Grocery store pumpkin patches are pretty cool. Although I would be content with the displays opening in October and the selection being solely orange, I can deal with their evolving nature. Don’t Blink.