I have noticed that a lot of my niche, occasional preferences aren’t there anymore. Frozen mangoes, marmite, full-fat kefir, frozen (but shelled) soybeans. The whole niche-preference thing seems boiling with unpredictability lately, like virtual quantum sugared papaya spears popping into and out of existence, and reappearing as another brand, or perhaps an animal or a Kokeshi toothpick.
The pandemic has taught me to subsist on a mere fraction of the full annoying quirkiness of which I am capable under more ideal conditions.
Weird one, can’t find a reasonably price wheel barrow right now. Nothing under $100. Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, Target, Amazon, eBay, Military Exchange and Ace. Tractor Supply too.
Ace took my order for one and cancelled it the next day as they couldn’t fill it.
People who are willing to do certain jobs seems to be the shortage now. I live in a small town, and just today I saw that Tractor Supply, Home Depot and Circle K all have signs out now looking for employees.
I also went into my local Food Lion for the first time in more than a year and there were only two checkout lines open, which is unheard of for a weekend. They’d also installed 4 self-checkout stands in my time out of the loop, so I used one of those today.
Right. There’s a certain night-time formulation I like to take occasionally. But even all the other brands are looking sparse on the shelves, night-time or otherwise.
I can’t get a bulk order of coconut coir to save my life. I own an organic lawn & garden company, and we rely on making our own fertilizers, soil amendments and potting blends, but we’ve had two suppliers in the past week tell us they don’t have any coco coir. I blame it on all of the newly legalized pot across the country.
Chewy to the rescue! And in less than 48 hours, I might add. Heavy box, but the cats are now set for the next few weeks. Of course I’ll stop by the store this afternoon and the shelves will be packed.
Cheaper by far, and if you place a large enough order, free shipping!
One of their secrets is that they sell manufacturer’s seconds - the Friskies cans that are dented but still intact. They don’t look good on the shelves, so Chewy boxes them up and sells them cheap.
I’m curious if this is an artifact of living near a major port (New Orleans), but:
At the moment, everything we buy regularly seems to be stocked well at all our local stores. Just like 2019.
For the first time in 15 months, this past weekend I finally saw sizeable bottles of Purell on the shelves for pre-pandemic prices. Of course, Purell now has got A LOT of competition.
I’ve cut back my Purell usage a good bit since they’ve started de-emphasizing the danger of contaminated surfaces. I still wash my hands when I get home from errands, but I’m not constantly dousing my hands with hand sanitizer all day like I did a year ago.
My cuticles thank me for it.
I still can’t find plain Spam in containers smaller than a pound, which is too much. We haven’t had a Spam musubi in a long time.
I’m still using just as much hand sanitizer at work because I’ve become more aware of how much certain coworkers touch their mouths and/or noses (yes, reaching under the mask or face shield, if they’re wearing one) and then touch other things. I got an excellent deal at the local Publix when they moved their big bottles of liquid santizer to the clearance table.
I’m waiting to get a similar bargain on some k95 masks now that mask mandates are slowly being dropped. I think it’s going to be the solution to my ‘cutting grass makes my asthma act up’ problem, though I’ll test it soon with my brand new 40v lawn mower and masks I still have, first.
I just bought some KN95s. I’m in the Central Valley in northern California, and I hear fire season is likely to be even worse than usual. Considering that in both 2018 and 2020, we had post-apocalyptic “air quality” in my area (with no fires closer than 25 miles) and ash falling…
I bought some N95 masks years ago to mow the lawn on dusty days, and hated them. Yesterday, with the oaks at peak pollen, I tried a Stark’s Vacuum cloth face mask, and it worked like a charm. Kept the pollen out, but easy to breath through. I highly recommend them for ordinary dust.
(I have no relationship with Stark’s Vacuum, except having bought about a dozen of their masks for me and my family.)
I’m interested to find out how the KN95s handle the dust in my garage compared to the dust masks I typically wear. They’re certainly more comfortable, and much easier to wear with glasses.
The local grocery store is still out of stain treating products, and small sizes of bottled water (except for the most expensive brands) are sold out as well.
And mid-June and the latest from the vendor is “uh, no clue”. Nobody else has 'em either.
We were at a friend’s house last night - and talking about stoves, they had been using individual induction burners for years because their cooktop died suddenly right before Thanksgiving one year. So their “stove” consisted of 4 individual induction burners.
Some time after her husband passed away last year (pre-pandemic as a result of a long illness) they discovered that he had already purchased a replacement, put it aside in a spare room, never installed it, and never even mentioned it to her. They installed it recently - and sent us home with one of their freestanding burners. We could have taken all 4, I think. I said “well, we can try it and if we decide we loathe it, we can cancel the backordered one and get a regular one!”
After the Texas deepfreeze February, we decided to upgrade our generator. It took over a month to get the first electrician to the house, and it was April before we got any firm bids. According to him, there was at least a 6 month delay in getting large generators, and it could be a year before we had a completed system.
We chose to order one of the really large “portables” and it took almost 2 months for it to arrive. Now we’re waiting for an electrician to upgrade the transfer switch and hookups for the increased amperage. No telling how long that will take.
I’m not sure if this is connected with supply issues, but I can’t see how it can’t be…corn masa (the outer coating on tamales) has suddenly become sweet. I’ve had tamales from 4 different sources in the last couple of months and they have all been sweet.
