Stop & Shop Scanners

Last month, Stop and Shop introduced scanners in 100 of its stores, including the one in our very own New Paltz. I was surprised to find how easy they are to operate. I'm no slouch when it comes to electronics, but I still defer to Shirra when it comes to hooking up the DVD player or getting the computer to interface with our external hard-drive. So if I can get a scanner to work, anyone can.

Scanners save you time because you don't have to wait in line for a cashier. You simply scan an item and put in in your bag. Oh yeah -- make sure to have some shopping bags with you, or else you're just a doofus who likes to waste time and plastic.

Anyway, once you've finished shopping, you simply scan a barcode reader at the self-check-out lane and pay. Voila! You're done. And so far, I've had almost no trouble with the scanners, and everyone I've spoken with has praised them to the sky.

Some people have a complaint about them, however: the cashiers. I spoke last week with one of the more experienced associates, and she told me that she's afraid that scanners are going to take jobs away. She lamented the fate of high school seniors, moms with empty nests, and other people who need an entry-level job. It might only pay a smidge over the minimum wage, but a job at S&S still gives a person health benefits, work experience, and a few bucks towards the rent.

Some shoppers refuse to use the scanners out of a sense of loyalty to their fellow workers. I'm hoping that the company finds an alternate use for its employees. Maybe they could use workers to increase the paltry number of floor walkers, resulting in a better shopping experience that would enrich S&S over its cross-street rival, Shoprite.

Spicy Prices

Short version: Don't buy spices at the supermarket if you have an alternative like a health food store.
Moral: Sometimes a cell phone pays for itself.

Shirra sent me on an errand just before Turkey Day. She wants to make a few pies before Thursday's festivities. On the list were four spices:

Nutmeg
Cloves
Ginger
Cinnamon

Stop 'N' Shop price for these four items: $35

This seemed a tad high -- nutmeg ain't cheap, but hey! -- so I gave Shirra a call. She suggested I try the health food store next door, the one with the odd sign. Is it "Healthy Nutrition"? "Health / Nutrition"? Maybe the carrot stands for an ampersand? Or perhaps it's just a carrot: "Health Carrot Nutrition".

Whatever the name, I like their prices. I bought what seemed like a fair amount of all four of the spices. Grand total: $1.47.

Happy Turkey Day!

Tho I live in New Paltz, I still have a foot Manhattan, thanks to my mom's apartment, and we spent a wonderful Thanksgiving there.

We drove down Wednesday morning after meeting with Emmett's teacher for a great report on our son. We'd planned a busy day, managing to squeeze in two grandmothers, two haircuts (for the girls), a mile-long unicycle ride for me and Emmett, and three tutoring students -- and that was just the first four hours. By 5 pm, the crowds around 81st St. were beginning to get pretty thick, and by that point, the police had begun keeping out people who couldn't claim to live (or be visiting someone) on my mom's block. This basically means that the police are there to keep out the tourists, since New Yorkers know that a simple lie will get them that much closer to a giant Kermit the Frog.

We learned two years ago to avoid Columbus Avenue like the plague. For about 7 hours, crowds mill about there in density matched only by the people who swarm off tourist buses to stand outside of the Today Show with their signs promoting their high school basketball team back in Idaho. I didn't realize at the time, but what happened is that the police department decided to turn Columbus Avenue from 77th to 82nd Streets into a huge cattle drive. Once you're in the slow-moving stampede, you really can't get out until you get to the other side. I accidentally got caught up in this back in 2005 while riding (and eventually pushing) my 36" unicycle and carrying some groceries that Shirra had asked me to pick up on the way home; the 10-block trip took me about a half-hour. This year, we knew enough to take Amsterdam Avenue when we were walking down to a friend's party, and the experience was much more pleasant.

The kids had fun watching the balloons being inflated. I learned recently that Macy*s has had to stockpile helium because of a worldwide shortage of the stuff (driving prices higher and higher, as tho they, too, were filled with helium). The kids didn't care too much about this lesson in economics but were more interested in which characters were on display and how big they were. Because I was working, Shirra took the kids outside for some cute snaps as they watched the balloons being inflated. On Thanksgiving morning, she and my mom took them outside to watch the inflatable cavalcade disappear around the corner as the parade began.

By noon, the remnants of the balloons had all but vanished, and order -- and parking -- were restored to my mom's block. Emmet and I fetched the car from a mile away, again necessitating a fun ride on our unicycles, and then rode over to Zabar's and back for some humidifiers. Four hours later, we sat down to our Thanksgiving meal with our parents, my brother and his wife, and my mom's best friend. Maeve was the only member of my little family who still eats meat, and apparently she enjoyed the turkey, and the rest of us enjoyed all of the fixings. The meal had been delivered by Fresh Direct, an outfit that has brought meals (or groceries) to New Yorkers for the past few years and is one of the few things that Shirra genuinely misses about Manhattan.

Shirra left for New Paltz on a bus that evening in order to be at her store for a huge shopping day on Friday, and the kids and I arrived home by 3pm. It was a fun and easy holiday for everyone. Phew. Now we have Hanukah to look forward to -- I hope it comes off as well.

Top Co-Op Shop...Entering the SPENDOSPHERE!

We still belong to the Park Slope Food Co-Op. A monthly work shift there entitles a person to shop for awesome food at amazing prices. Because the Co-Op only raises prices by 22% above wholesale (compared with 100% for most retail outlets), customers save nearly 40% on most items. So how did we end up spending $560 this past Saturday?

Well, for one thing, we were shopping for three months because of our upcoming leave-of-absense. We can't make our next two work-shift dates, so we told the office folks to put our memberships on hold till September. The other thing to consider was that Shirra is planning to bake up a pasta dish for the monthly meeting of the New Paltz Fire Department tomorrow night. So a small portion of that huge bill is going to be reimbursed.

No one at the Co-Op had ever seen a shopping spree of this magnitude. We'd all seen some in the $300 range and even a few over $400, but this was a whole new spendosphere. I made the suggestion that every time someone spends over $500, a bell go should go off -- sort of like a bit of Las Vegas -- but everyone knew I was kidding.

So what does $560 get you? Well, according to my math, about $1000 worth of groceries. We got 61 fruit strips. The rest is a blur. Peanuts, pumpkin seeds, pistachios. Some laundry items.

Cel Phone Jammer

People talk unnecessarily on their mobiles. Usually they only need to speak for 15-30 seconds but end up talking for a minute or two. I'm going to be a cel phone jammer.

I just need to select the ideal flavor. I think that orange marmalade will work best because so few people like it.

Smearing a bit of marmalade on somebody's cel phone would probably keep them from talking on it for at least a few minutes.

I must put orange marmalade jam on the shopping list.

Keeping Organic

When we lived in Brooklyn, we fell in love with the Park Slope Food Coop. Its membership has since doubled to about 14,000, but the PSFC is still a great place to shop due in large part to the wonderful people on our shift and the incredibly low prices. To shop there, members must work 2.5-hour shifts every 4 weeks. The rewards are an amazing selection of high-quality foods at a markup of just 22% over wholesale. Over all, you can't beat the coop's prices.

Shirra and I were lucky enough a few years ago to find ourselves with a great group of people in the 'food processing' unit. This is where people prepare the spice, cheese, olive, dry fruit, and tea items of the cooperative. Our group has six workers, and for most of the past 5 years, they've been the same people. When we moved to New Paltz, we found that we couldn't give up the monthly trips to the coop. Logistics proved difficult, but we've managed.

We obviously can't get all of our needs taken care of in a monthly trip to Brooklyn, so we've had to subsidize our diets by shopping locally. The good news is that New Paltz has several excellent choices to keep our fridge filled with healthy foods. Our favorite spot is Healthy Foods, located in the New Paltz Plaza (off the north end of Main St). The prices are generally great, and when that's not the case (like the high cost of almonds these days), we simply find other favorites until we can hit the PSFC again.

On the lower end of Main St, across from the tattoo parlor, is another good healthy food shop. The choices are different, but I haven't shopped there enough to compare them with Healthy Foods. This shop is smaller, so it's lacking somewhat in feng shui in comparison to its larger competitor, but it's great to have a place to get a healthy snack when we're in the center of town.

If we wanted to save a little money while shopping locally, there is another great choice in High Falls. I came upon it accidentally while antiquing, and I got a good feeling about it right away. It reminds me of the hippy days of the Park Slope Food Coop (from what I've been told), when the membership was smaller and people had to share a lot in the upkeep of the store. The downside with this place is that the discount is only 10%, so its prices are quite a bit higher than its bigger cousin from Brooklyn. Apparently this savings is comparable to that of other nearby food coops, so I'm not complaining. I guess it just shows how amazing the PSFC is and why it's so hard for us to give up our monthly trips to the old neighborhood.

How to Choose Antiques

How to Buy Every Antique in the Area

Even before we'd closed on our house, we bought a cool antique at a huge antique store (managed by a man named Walter, who represents over two dozen dealers). It's called a low-boy, and it is comprised of 15 deep drawers arranged three across in five rows. We found out later that in the time it sat in the store, many people came in offering more money for it. Shirra is planning to use it for yarn storage (tho it's already been useful in telling a good yarn, haha).

A few weeks later, just after we'd come back from Martha's Vineyard and were settling in, we visited a yarn store that sits next to a different antique store, one we'd never noticed before (and there are a few others in town). What grabbed my attention was a cash register in the window. This huge, heavy thing used to sit on a pedestal in a department store. Built in 1913, it was the largest model put out by the National Cash Register company (NCR), weighing in at 250 pounds! It's in good condition, tho I didn't know that at the time. The owner of the antique store, Jack, didn't know for sure if it worked, tho he strongly suspected that it did since his children had played with it over the years (he had only recently decided to part with it).



Over the next few days, we bought two more items, one each from Walter and Jack. From Jack, who mainly deals in beautiful, rare, and pricey items, we got one of the least expensive pieces in the shop, a Hoosier cabinet that beautifies our dining room. And from Walter's, we bought a cool cabinet that nearly defies description, but I'll try: It stands about four feet high and has four pull out drawers arranged two-atop-two. The "drawers" tilt out (making them "tilters," I guess). It was meant for vending bulk items about 100 years ago, and that's why each tilter has a glass covering (so that the store owner could advertize what was in each). This odd item had sat in the shop for many months; those who liked it couldn't find a use for it, I guess. We got it for half of what the owner had originally wanted. We're using it for storing our laundry.



We still have space for a few more antiques of a medium size or larger, but there is the matter of money. When we have some, maybe we'll go antique shopping again.