test blog 8

I've spent the last two days reading, blogging, scratching, and occasionally eating and sleeping. There were other things to do on Salt Spring Island, but I was too uncomfortable to do anything. It was very nice to have uninterrupted time to read and write. Tomorrow we'll take an early ferry to Crofton, drive up to Campbell River, take care of our appointments, then head back home.  * * * * I've had a long running argument by email with the host of this cottage. I'd like to leave a negative review, but I've read that bad reviews can seriously damage a host's standing with Airbnb. Also, I don't have many reviews on Airbnb and I don't want to be reviewed as a bad guest. I wish the cottage was listed on TripAdvisor, as I have a more substantial body of reviews there. I've also read that a guest's review is not published until the host reviews the guest -- so if the host wants to suppress a negative review, they can simply decline to leave...

If you stream movies and TV series, you know that the proliferation of streaming channels has had mixed results for consumers. Many shows that were formerly on Netflix have been pulled by their media parents, and are now found on different streaming apps. At the same time, Netflix's monthly price has increased -- so you're paying more for less. Those who still want access to the shows no longer on Netflix need to subscribe to an additional streaming service; Disney (which has all the Marvel properties) and Britbox are two big culprits. Two other very popular streaming services, Crave (owned by Bell Media) and Prime (owned by Amazon), have exclusive rights to many enticing shows, including all the HBO and Showtime series. Recently Bell Media made an annoying cash-grab by offering a first season of a given show on Crave, then requiring an additional subscription to Movies+HBO or Starz to watch the rest. Many people have observed that if you want a few of these services, the pric...

Wayfair.ca  has amazing customer service! Their selection is great, the prices are competitive, and they offer free shipping with orders of more than $75. But their customer service has sealed the deal. We bought two lamps, replacing the lamps that were smashed by We Help Moving 's ineptitude. The glass shade on one of the new lamps was scratched. The lamp had been tightly packed in several pieces, and I was dreading sending back the damaged part, or worse, the whole lamp. Earlier this year, we bought a lamp from Ikea that arrived damaged. It was also a piece of crap, and we asked for a refund rather than a replacement. They sent us a postage sticker, and they had to receive the lamp before they would process the refund -- even though the damage was too extensive to re-sell it. Wayfair shipped the new lamp immediately, and suggested we bring the damaged one to a thrift store. It was as simple as emailing them. Our biggest purchase for our new place has been patio furniture. We deci...

This is the other shopping story. The one in which I don't come out looking like a rational adult. I don't care much about clothes, shoes, bags. I don't buy expensive cosmetics or skin-care products. As long as I have what I need, I'm good. It's easy to watch my spending about any of those. But. There's always a but, right? I love home things. Towels, linens, dinnerware. Rugs. Shelves. Lamps. Organizers. (I could go on.) And I love home-decorating. When buying clothes, I hold my nose and get it over with. But don't let me in Bed Bath and Beyond or Ikea without adult supervision. Despite this, I still try very hard to not buy gratuitously. I won't say I never  buy home things that we don't technically need. But once I've got our "needs" covered, I try to leave it there. (Scare quotes around needs, acknowledging that these are not true needs, but needs of privilege.) Does it seem like I'm avoiding something? Not getting to the point? ...

I have two stories to tell about my shopping habits. This is the one with a happy ending, the story that makes me appear to be a rational adult. On our road trip from Mississauga to Port Hardy, I quickly became aware that my boots had become useless. They were light hiking boots from New Balance ( shown here ). I wore them in Egypt and on our Northern Ontario trip, but they were suddenly taking on water like a leaky raft. If it was at all wet outside, my feet were wet and cold. Note to self: buy new boots. But how? Where? Surely not in Port Hardy. Not even in Campbell River. There really is only one answer: buy them online. I buy almost everything online; it's been my preferred method of shopping for a very long time. But can you buy shoes online? Of course I know shoes are sold online, but how do you buy shoes if you can't try them on first? And don't you need to try on multiple pairs, until you find one that fits? I also realized I need not just new boots, but better  bo...

Greetings from Mountain Time! I had a friend from Denver who always said Mountain was the forgotten time zone. He may have been right: we forgot about the hour time difference until we saw the time on a bank sign. On the way out of Swift Current, the highway was a bit slippery, not from recent snow, but from compacted snow and ice that hadn't been cleared. We saw a few trucks in the median that had slipped off the road; we did have to drive a bit more carefully, but nothing scary. The land looked more like ranch and grazing land than farmland, and we did see a lot of cows and some buffalo. I'm glad to see them out eating grass the way they should be. I spotted a few animal crossings, the tunnels built under highways. The land was also less flat, with low, rolling hills, but still unbroken to the horizon. There were looong stretches without a town in sight. We listened to more Dortmunder -- we're both getting a little bored and want the book to end soon -- and coordinated th...

These days, most hotel rooms contain some sort of green messaging, as companies are expected to show how eco-friendly they are. Usually guests have the option of not having their towels changed daily, which is supposed to yield big energy savings. Last week at the Sheraton Parkway in Toronto, I learned that Sheraton's green policy is not exactly as advertised. I don't know if this qualifies as greenwashing, but it is certainly not full disclosure. The card reads: Conserving water, energy and other resources is rewarding for you and great for the environment. Enjoy a $5 voucher at participating food and beverage outlets or 500 Starpoints® awarded at check-out for each night you decline housekeeping (except day of departure). It feels good to conserve. To participate in the Make a Green Choice program, please tell us at check-in or look for the door hanger in your guestroom. It may feel good to conserve, but your conservation doesn't feel good to hotel workers. For each gues...

When I watch baseball, I always watch the Red Sox broadcast, and almost always choose local radio for the audio feed. (Hooray for MLB streaming on Roku!) And while I always mute the ads between innings, hundreds of ads are stuffed into the broadcast itself , so it's impossible not to hear and see a lot of advertising. One advertising staple is something called "Cars for Kids". The ad exhorts you to make a cash donation or to donate your used car, and tells you how Cars for Kids makes it very simple. I've been hearing this for years, but only recently wondered, what is Cars for Kids? Who are the kids, and how are cars helping them? I assumed it had something to do with fundraising for children with a serious illness. The Red Sox are linked to an organization called The Jimmy Fund , which supports the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The Make-A-Wish Foundation of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, is also a Red Sox sponsor. So I assumed that Cars for Kids was something simi...

Loblaw Companies Limited 1 President's Choice Circle Brampton, Ontario, L6Y 5S5 Attention: LCL Customer Relations Centre Dear Loblaw Ltd.: I am a Loblaw customer and I was extremely disappointed by recent public statements made by Loblaw CEO Galen Weston, Jr., regarding the proposed raise of the minimum wage in Ontario. Mr. Weston claimed that the proposed wage hikes will result in higher prices and more self-checkout aisles, and speaks about labour costs "ballooning" by $190 million.* Mr. Weston clearly values Loblaw's shareholders more than it cares about its customers. When I spend my hard-earned money, I don't think it's too much to ask the store to provide check-out and bagging, and for there to be adequate staff on-hand to minimize time spent waiting in line. Instead, Mr. Weston implies that if the minimum wage is increased, I will be forced to provide his very profitable company with free labour by doing my own checkout. When a company posts $990 mill...

In our home, shopping at Whole Foods was once reserved for special dinners or used a stop-gap during an extremely busy week. Then slowly, over time, it became habit -- and a big one. For a long time now, we've had two regular shopping days each week, one at Loblaws and one at Whole Foods. Sometimes we end up at Whole Foods multiple times in one week. This has been expensive, of course, but I felt it was worth spending more for better quality, and even more so for convenience. Because of Whole Foods' prepared food, we've been able to spend less time on food preparation, but still eat healthfully. Where prepared food in most supermarkets consists of rotisserie chicken and mayonnaisey pasta salads, Whole Foods carries an array of fresh, healthy, delicious -- expensive -- choices. Over time we relied on this more... and more. I did determine that some prepared food was actually no more expensive than if I had made it myself: see my post about Roman tuna salad . Now I suspect th...

I recently tried a new brand of tea. I'm always looking for almond tea, which is difficult or impossible to find (more on that below), and noticed Mighty Leaf had an Almond Spice . It's green tea, and I prefer black, but I thought for the almond, I'd take a chance. The Mighty Leaf Tea box is covered in stories about how carefully they care for the tea, the quality of their tea leaves, and how green the company is. The tea is whole leaf only, the tea pouches are made from the greenest material, and so on. Back when we had organics recycling, we always tossed used tea bags in the "green bin". Now, living in an apartment, we no longer have that option. The tea bag is going in the trash anyway, so the greenness of the pouch isn't a big concern for me. However, ordinary tea bags are fine for organics recycling, so I'm not sure why this pouch is so special. When I brought the tea home and opened the box, I was surprised and dismayed to find each individual pouc...

EgyptAir, we love you! I'm writing this from an airport hotel, where I did not expect to be. After Ridiculous Breakfast #3, we did a little negotiating (see below), then packed up for the airport. On a tip from the concierge, we stopped at the beautiful Zalatimo Brothers for Sweets on the way. I was quite pleased: this saved time and solved a problem. And then, as we walked into the airport, we saw... Zalatimo Brothers for Sweets! They have a small outpost near the international departures. The flight from Amman to Cairo was fast and uneventful. The EgyptAir rep in Amman told us we would have to go through passport control and customs, get our luggage, then check into our next flight, and so on. Turns out this was untrue. We were waiting in the passport control line in Cairo, when a man approached us, claiming to be from EgyptAir, saying they have a free hotel room and dinner for us, and do we want to see the pyramids, too? It took quite a bit of convincing that he was legit, but o...

I've noticed that ideas that I used to blog about, I am now posting on Facebook instead -- a combination of laziness and time pressure. I'm going to try to get the ideas here, first. Conventional wisdom has it that preparing food at home is less expensive than buying prepared food. I'm not talking about frozen or processed food, but freshly prepared food from a store like Whole Foods, or increasingly, regular supermarkets trying to compete with specialty stores. Allan and I buy quite a bit of prepared food. With limited time and energy, it's often the tool we reach for to keep healthy eating on track. It's less expensive than eating in a restaurant, and it's more convenient if you're tired and want to stay at home. I always think we spend far too much on prepared food, especially something I could make myself -- and once did, in the dark ages before Whole Foods came to Mississauga. Of course, you're not comparing the price of prepared food to not eating....

I've really been enjoying my Nexus 7 tablet. I dislike that tablets have become the norm, and in a perfect world I'd use a desktop, a netbook, and a tablet. But in the real world, my netbook has been phased out, and I'm back to taking notes with pen and paper. But in general, I do enjoy my tablet. I especially love the compact size of the Nexus, how smoothly it glides from task to task, and how quickly it charges. I use a Samsung Galaxy at work, and the Nexus has it beat in all categories. And  I picked it up - the version with both wifi and data - for less than $300. Now I've learned that Google has discontinued the Nexus 7 . I'm probably going to buy a second one to have on reserve for when my current one dies! The tablet is constantly asking me to update apps - I choose not to use automatic updates - and I've already learned that the next update of the Gmail app has some features that I find very annoying, and which can't be turned off. This is not me bei...

I don't know when people starting calling the day after US Thanksgiving "Black Friday," but the expression has become synonymous with over-consumption, empty consumer culture, and the bizarre importance assigned to hunting for bargains. And what a bargain it is: a multibillion-dollar corporation sells a piece of crappy future landfill at an artificially low price by manufacturing it halfway around the globe with child labour, dumping toxins into the environment, and paying its own customers sub-living wages. In return, consumers agree to see nothing and know nothing except the price sticker. It's a deal that is devouring our planet, and our souls. Those low, low prices on Black Friday are partly subsidized by Walmart employees, who earn crap wages, can't get full-time work, and are harassed and intimidated when speak up about their working conditions. This year, as in 2013 and 2012, Walmart workers will go on strike to demand change. And you can help them. Here...

I've begun changing my personal care products to cruelty-free: natural products from companies that are better for the environment and don't test on animals. I'm not sure how far I'll be able to go, but I've begun the process. After a lifetime of using conventional products, I was moved to think more about this by a few different sources. When I worked in the children's library, I often saw a book about animal cruelty. It was not the one I wrote about here , about dogs, but a book in a series called "Tough Issues," similar to the kind of series I used to contribute to. This "tough issue" asked the question, "Why do people harm animals?"  It's a good book, one that successfully treads that very careful line separating honesty from the overly graphic. Even so, there was one image that burned in my brain. (I know this image would have been highly disturbing to me as a child. Considering I saw the image in a children's book, thi...

There's a new bully in town, and he's not going after fat kids in the school cafeteria. He's a corporate bully, and he's gunning for you , his dissatisfied customer. An increasing number of companies are threatening lawsuits against customers who post negative online reviews about their products or services. At least one company has actually sued  a former customer for defamation, based on negative reviews - and won. This is a chilling development for anyone who cares about free speech, a free internet, and consumer advocacy. But it may not be as dire as it sounds. A slightly more level playing field We are bombarded with advertising at every turn. Everywhere we look, companies are claiming that their products will make us beautiful, cooler, more connected. That we'll look smarter, live longer, enjoy our lives more... if only we buy their products. Our world is filled with false advertising, if not by explicit claim, then certainly by implicit suggestion. If these c...

The biggest surprise of the 2014 baseball postseason isn't the absence of both the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. It isn't the Kansas City Royals, playing baseball in October for the first time since 1985. The biggest surprise of the 2014 postseason is Major League Baseball's decision to put fans ahead of corporate contracts. After years of ensuring that baseball fans could only watch the playoffs and World Series if they subscribed to certain television providers, MLB has finally reversed course. The 2014 postseason is available to MLBTV subscribers through  a variety of providers and devices . A few days ago, I wrote a long, ranting post (available below!) about how MLB always puts corporate television contracts ahead of fans. When I started collecting links to complete the post, I was amazed to learn that MLB's policies had changed. I don't know if MLB was forced to do this in court , or if some smart young executive finally got them to understand that...