Last Sunday, I went to a supermarket looking for lunch meat. I went through eight packages that all expired on that day. I finally found one that expired in August.
I suspect the stores have supply line issues because I’ve never seen this before. But it sucks.
When meat expires, they just repackage it in a new wrapper with a new label with a new date.
I’ve seen it done.
If we were back in the days of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”, they’d just process expired meat into Pure Beef Sausage.
(avoids Food Lion jokes)
Oh, everyone hates HOA’s.
What they don’t hate is well-maintained neighborhood roads, neighborhood amenities like dog parks and swimming pools, and neighbors that keep their property well-maintained and vermin free.
But they hate HOAs.
I saw a post on r/legaladvice written by someone that had problems getting the neighbors to pitch in for the maintenance of a shared private road.
Luckily, they had an owners association agreement regarding the road that turned out to be enforceable.
But the guy was very clear that the “owners association” was not an HOA, because he hates HOA’s and would never live anywhere that had one.
Color for ground beef doesn’t really mean much. Go by smell. If it smelled, OK cooking it to the temp you would for a meat sauce, it would have been perfectly fine. I wouldn’t cook a medium rare burger out of it, but a sauce or meatballs where you’re cooking it to 160+ there’s no reason to pitch it. If it smelled even a little funky, I’d cook it and give it to the dogs.
It did smell funky. 
Our dog has a sensitive system and doesn’t handle “people food” very well, so I’d rather not have to clean up that mess as well on top of everything else. 
The year I had my first upper GI (and “while we’re at it” colonoscopy; north was fine, south was not) I made my husband go in for the same. He was diagnosed with Barrett’s. A year or two later, I had to switch primary care doctors, and told him that tale. He said “Of the two, Barrett’s is scarier” to which I replied “Yeah, but the prep for the test is a HELL of a lot easier!”.
12 years later, my husband’s Barrett’s has not progressed. I, on the other hand, managed to develop it since then.
Someone stole the rear tire (and wheel, and sprocket, and skewer) off my bicycle. I wish they had just cut the damn lock and taken the whole damn bike, because at least then I’d have the comfort of knowing someone was enjoying it. Instead, I’m left with a very specific set of parts missing and no easy way to replace them. Which has me pissed. I really would rather just buy a new damn bike than have to try and figure out how to order the specific parts I need and what who the hell knows how long for them to be shipped, but of course then I still have 70% of a bike all ready to go, so it’s be kind of wasteful not to try and piece it back together.
That’s weird. I used to build bikes (at Toys R Us, let’s not get pretentious) and I remember quick-release front wheels being common. So you can just take off the front wheel to dissuade someone from stealing it (since they aren’t riding away on it), whether you also lock it up or not. I’ve also heard stories about someone doing that, and then when they weren’t looking someone snatches their wheel. (Say they go to a coffee shop, taking their wheel in with them, they buy a latte and while picking it up leave the wheel at a booth, and they walk back to find the wheel gone.)
Even Kids in the Hall addressed this phenomenon.
But the rear wheel? That’s different.
Let me tell you a tale - (bonus points if you get the reference!)
So, we just got back yesterday evening from a European River Cruise Vacation. We had gone on one last year without any COVID issues. This time, it was reported to us in our daily briefings that there were passengers on board who tested positive for COVID. So they had to stay in their rooms until we got to end, and then they would have to quarantine at a hotel until they got a negative test in order to fly home (sucks, yeah). It turned into a little bit of an Agatha Christie guessing game figuring out who wasn’t showing up at dinner or the lounge. We deduced it to be one couple - who we had shared dinner with 2 nights before. The next day they reported more passenger testing positive. We played the same process of elimination game and deduced it to be one couple - who we had shared dinner with the next night. GULP! So, I developed symptoms of a head cold, and promptly did a self test - it came back negative. Whew. Before disembarkation, the cruise line offered another COVID test for those flying the next day, again I tested negative. That is a big relief as I was able to fly back home as scheduled. (Still having runny nose and sneezing - yuck.) As I said, we got home yesterday evening.
So, this morning we do another self test…and we’re both testing positive! After all these years and months masking up and avoiding crowds and washing/disinfecting hands, we have finally been chosen. Ugh.
But that is NOT my mini-rant.
Naturally, we’ve been gone so we need groceries. Thankfully, we live in city and delivery or curbside pickup is standard. Being an Amazon Prime member, I like to use Whole Foods now and again. Using their website, they make a point of promoting “free pickup in 30 minutes” if you order above a certain dollar amount. No problem reaching the dollar amount. I start my process mid-morning. Order order order, lemons, eggs, bread, etc. etc. etc. Should be able to squeeze in the pickup this afternoon, easily before dinner time. BUT WAIT! I get to the end of the order and now it’s telling me that there are no available times today until this evening at 8:00 PM. Uh, what happened to “free pickup in 30 minutes”? That, in my opinion, is a lie. A LIE. I don’t like it when folks LIE TO ME.
Yeah yeah, I get it, their busy, everyone is having trouble with staffing, etc. I GET IT! So, Mr. Bezos, could you get one of your code monkeys to update the website with less enthusiastic claims of turnaround time UPFRONT, just so us customers don’t feel like we are being LIED to?
But they don’t specify which 30 minutes, do they? Eh? Gotcha there. 
If it were me, I’d just take it to a competent bike shop and have them deal with it. The extra labour cost is probably well worth it.
It’s not just about the trouble/cost of fixing the issue, but that the bike will be unusable in the interim. That’s what bothers me most. I have a car, but I used my bike to go everywhere around town. I go grocery shopping with my bike. I ride my bike to work. I bask in the warmth of knowing, for instance, that I don’t have to worry about paying for metered parking downtown, for instance.
It’s to the point where I only use my car once a week for the sake of keeping the battery charged, not because I can’t go more than a week without the car. Indeed, I once went so long without using the car, that when I finally needed it (or at least really wanted it, because I was in pain and needed to get to a dentist) it turned out the battery was dead. So I road my bike the 5 miles to the dentist (5 miles not really being that far to me, except when I’m in pain).
I know this is going to come across as pretentious/cliched, but… for me, my bike is not just something I use recreationally, I have built my life around it. I pick out rentals/lodging locations based on biking distances. Where I have been attending school for the last two years, I don’t even know how to pay for parking (because it has to be done online, via an app). I ride it in the rain, I ride it in the snow. It get’s pretty hairy sometimes, especially when the snow is coming down heavy and the plows can’t keep up, but you know what? If I can’t get there with my bike, I probably don’t want to be driving in those conditions either. In fact I’d much rather fall off my bike into the snow than skid into a telephone pole with my car.
Point is, this has derailed my daily routine for at least the next week, and maybe two. Had they just stolen the whole bike, by the end of the day today I could assure you I would have a new bike, and by tomorrow this whole thing would be over and done with (but not in my rearview mirror–I don’t put mirrors on my bike).
/rant
My brother lives on a semi-isolated street where the neighbors are members of an association set up to maintain a few neighborhood services like snow plowing. Whatever dues they pay go for those services, not to maintain a committee that sets rules for how you can paint your house, plant your garden or what vehicles you can park in the driveway.
It’s been awhile since I visited him but I haven’t heard that the area has degenerated into a ramshackle vermin-filled slum.
I can’t help but think about this.
I do sympathize. I still think it is crazy they took the rear wheel. That’s a huge pain in the ass to replace. That really sucks.
Honestly… that’s kind of how I felt for the first 30 minutes or so (not happy like riding the bike, but sad like I’m Pee-wee and I just found my bike has disappeared, but worse: it wasn’t just disappeared, it was mutilated. It’s one thing to come to grips with someone else having it. It’s another to know that it’s going to need potentially weeks of rehabilitation to ride again).
I have no opinion on HOAs as I’ve never lived in a neighbourhood that had one, and I’ve lived in generally pretty decent neighbourhoods. I’ve read that HOAs are quite rare in Canada, mainly because provincial and municipal laws provide most of the regulatory controls and services needed. I find it a bit ironic that HOAs are much more common in the US. It seems like cultural distrust of government and celebration of individualist freedom has given rise to the creation of a quasi-governmental organization to regulate homeowners and provide shared resources. Isn’t that what governments are for in the first place?
Well, buck up (“I’m a rebel, Dottie…”), and get on the phone and call around til you find a bike mechanic that has the parts and can put it back together in the shortest amount of time.
I had to do that once. Like you, I go everywhere on bike (and resent having to get in a car) so I was worried. My favorite bike repair place said “We’re running about three weeks behind…”, so I looked everywhere online and found a guy on Craigslist who drives to random sites to do repairs and tune-ups.
He said he was pretty sure he had the parts, and promised he’d do anything he could to rush it. I brought my bike to a driveway where he was setting up shop that day, he immediately put my bike up on his stand: “Sorry, folks, this guy called with an emergency.” (No one minded)
Two hours later, I had a working bike! He did a tune-up, too. For less than the Real Bike Shop.
Shout out to Ian at Curbside Bikes!
If only you were near Chicago or Madison…
I appreciate the encouragement. What I settled on was Amazon today (so it’ll be a while), and a cheap-o bike from Walmart tomorrow. If the cheap bike makes it through the summer and/or when my current bike is successfully reconstructed, I’ll either drop it off in storage on my way back north or leave it on the sidewalk with a “take me” sign. As the mood takes me.