There was a time when people counted down the “shopping days” to Christmas!
This was a big deal. Everywhere there were reminders, “Only 35 Shopping Days until Christmas! Get at it!!” Stuff like that. The idea was, it made Christmas seem a lot closer when you took out the holidays and Sundays when stores were closed. And lots of times, in some places, stores were open for only a half-day on Saturdays.
Then along came a whole bunch of things, like Sunday openings. Late night shopping all week. Shopping on holidays. Even 24-hour shopping. And now of course, online.
Well, here’s a reminder anyway. As of Wednesday of this week, not counting that day, there are only 13 shopping days before Christmas.
Whew! Seems like only a few days ago we were cleaning up the yard, putting away stuff, getting ready for winter. And here it is, almost a whole year gone by.
Time does fly!
Time flying sounds a lot like the story “I am soooo busy.” Here’s a couple of thoughts, if you can spare time to think about them.
First, don’t spend all your time worrying about living and not enough time on actually living.
Second, don’t spend so much time running your business you forget about really running your business.
On the subject of shopping, your writer here has Christmas figured out. When shopping for partners. First, keep in mind, no matter what they say, partners don’t mind being fat. That makes things easy. Seriously. Plus when the box is opened, you can grab a nibble for yourself. Hint! Hint!
Partners always want to be fit and healthy. But seriously, do not go anywhere near that one. For example, bran flakes are not a good gift nor is it a good idea in some backhanded way reminder for your partner. Keep such ideas out of your head.
Unisex scarves always work. Get three. And package them with a nice, big gift certificate to a local store. And a box of something with chocolates.
Oh, one last thought. While any guy will be happy with a battery charger or another set of screwdrivers or a big tape measure or something like that, females will not be happy with a waffle iron or a new toaster. Not at all!
There! Everybody is happy!
Don’t let that discourage anybody who was thinking of a new truck for the partner. Or gift certificate for a hamburger or pizza. Always OK to work with what you have. This is all the voices of experience, everywhere, talking.
The old saying, “Better to have people think you are a fool, than open your mouth and prove you are one,” might apply in the town of Emo, Ont., population 1,300 and the rest of Ontario, too.
There, Emo town council voted against displaying a Pride rainbow flag. A group calling itself Borderland Pride made a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
According to news reports, the Commission vice-chair wrote in the decision that a statement from the mayor pretty-well decided the case. The mayor said “There’s no flag being flown for the other side of the coin . . . there’s no flag being flown for straight people.”
Apparently, after five days of testimony, the Commission ordered the local government to pay $10,000 to Borderland Pride, and mayor to pay another $5,000 personally. He has refused to pay it.
So, who is the fool here? More than one?
As a commenter on this story to the National Post newspaper wrote: “We have a flag and in fact, it represents all Canadians regardless of religion, culture, race or gender, and so on. It is a beautiful red and white Maple Leaf.”
A few weeks ago morning man Jared Gomes of KIX-FM radio in Peace River told listeners about his experience with shrinkflation.
That is the practice of making product packages bigger or a different shape, trying to hide the fact there is less inside the package than there used to be.
In reply, we mentioned our own experience with Campbell’s Chunky Soup. That soup went from a fat, chunky can with 540 ml of product, to 525 ml, in a taller, but slimmer can.
Well folks, we didn’t have a can at the time to compare with. But shortly after, got our hands on one of the new, “shrinkflated” cans. It turns out, the new size is actually even less, at 515 ml, than the old 540. Sorry ‘bout that!
Kind of on the same subject, we were checking out the “soup in a bag” products at local stores. These are dried noodle soups with flavours and sometimes, dehydrated veggies or meat.
As we always do, we checked the calories and other content, like sodium. Hmmm, we figured. Here are a couple with hardly any calories at all. Got to check these all out. So we scooped up several packages.
A few days later, deciding to try one out, we were reading over the fine print. Those we thought were “bad” had 460 calories per bag. The “good” ones had 190 calories.
But then we noticed, the good ones, with 85 grams of product total, were measuring for a half-serving. That means the numbers were only for 42.5 grams. The bad ones were 100 grams for a full serving. A quick bit of work on a calculator shows the “good” package actually was 447 calories for a pack equal to the “bad” one at 460 calories. Plus, a whole Godzilla size serving of sodium.
Tricky little devils, eh? And smart enough to have us fooled for a bit!