This IS the News…

March 21, 2012 ~ JodiLea ~ 1 Comment

This weekend I was scanning our local paper trying to come up with a topic for “This Could Be News…” and suddenly, there it was. Not my topic, but a real story. I just have to read it to you… You can’t make this kind of $%it up!

Thieves rolling Tide detergent out of stores
by Ben Nuckols
Associated Press

WASHINGTON – When police in suburban Washington raided the home of a suspected drug dealer last fall, they found the cocaine they expected, as well as something unusual on the man’s shelves: nearly 20 large bottles of Tide laundry detergent.

It turns out his customers were paying for the drugs not with cash but with stolen Tide.

Tide has become a hot commodity among thieves at supermarkets and drugstores in some parts of the country. For a variety of reasons, the detergent in the familiar flame-orange bottle is well-suited for resale on the black market: Everybody needs laundry detergent, and Tide is the nation’s most popular brand. It’s expensive, selling for up to $20 for a large bottle at stores. And it doesn’t spoil.

One Safeway supermarket in Prince George’s County, MD, was losing thousands of dollar’s worth of Tide a week before police made more than two dozen arrests. In West St. Paul, MN, a man pleaded guilty to stealing more than $6,000 worth of the stuff from a Wal-Mart and was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Police in Newport News, VA, and other cities around the country have reported a spike in thefts.

In the Washington area, some CVS pharmacies have attached electronic anti-theft tags to bottles of Tide. One CVS in a well-to-do Dupont Circle neighborhood keeps Tide locked up behind glass.

Charlene Holton, a clerk at a CVS in northwest Washington, has seen too many Tide thefts to count.

“It’s a hot item! It’s gotten out of hand,” Holton said. “They usually take maybe four, whatever they can carry out the door. We have to fight for that. It’s rough.”

The store has put electronic tags on its Tide, but that doesn’t stop thieves, Holton said. They run out of the store with the detergent and remove the tags later.

It’s not clear how new the Tide theft phenomenon is, but organized theft has been a problem for U.S. retailers, costing them $3.53 billion in 2010, according to the National Retail Foundation.

Now that’s alota laundry 😉

Adventures With Flooring: The Vinyl’s Revenge

March 10, 2012 ~ JodiLea

This is our entry way vinyl that matches our kitchen floor. It is very photogenic, meaning that it looks fairly OK when it’s shiny from the camera’s flash. In reality, it is a lot darker and sinister. In fact you can’t take a picture of it without the flash, even in the daylight. And note how well it goes with wall colors.

Fake Brick Vinyl — The butt-ugly flooring

I honestly thought I would have fun ripping out this butt-ugly vinyl in my kitchen. I have hated that flooring since we moved in – 24 years ago. It is only because we had to fix water damage from an old leaky dishwasher that we are changing the flooring before we put the house up for sale.

Before Cleaning up Floor — What is under the vinyl..

The job is much harder than I ever suspected. Admittedly, hubby is doing most of the work which is rightly so, because this type of housework is MANS WORK. I am helping him, but my level of strength is low, especially compared to hubby’s, so my job is to remove the backing and horrible gluey mess, that will now be referred to as the crap, from the floor that the vinyl left. No sweat, right?

Ha! Lots and lots of it, actually. Not to mention screaming back and shoulder muscles. And the cursing.

My fingers are all torn up and cracked. And I have worn gloves and use a large putty knife to scrape the crap. My carpel tunnel is protesting also. Damn my weakness!

I wanted to hire some flooring guys to replace the floor while I was at work. Is that too much to ask? But hubby is an excellent handy-man who can’t stand other people doing what he wants to get done. And besides that, he has left over flooring tiles in the garage. Which means that our kitchen floor will soon match the one in our guest bathroom. Hmm.. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I am sooo glad that I’m moving out of this crazy house!

.This is the progress I made on Thursday.

See the darker plywood on the right? That is from water damage. For some reason it makes the crap stick better.

To be continued….

The Hopeful (Lazy?) Gardener

March 7, 2012 ~ JodiLea

I come from a long line of Kansas farmers, who are no doubt laughing beyond the grave as they shake their heads at my flower garden.

Hey! I planted the daffodil bulbs in December and they are popping up on schedule. AND I have spent 2 weekends hacking weeds out of the California soil, which really isn’t soil at all, just dirty gravel broken up with rocks.

I was tired and achy and succumbed to temptation from a mail-order catalog that promised “quick and easy” beautiful flower gardens. I ordered these organic roll out strips filled with seeds and followed the instructions (except for the part that told me to remove all the rocks from the flower bed – which could never happen).

Flower Strips

Wah-Lah! This is the before photo of my beautiful flower garden. (Note the timely daffodil’s growing in the center) I just need to keep it damp for 2 weeks and the seeds will germinate. Unfortunately, it looks ridiculous now.

It was forecast to rain yesterday, so I did not water the precious strips. Dang! By the time I get home they may have dried out. Luckily I get home around 2:30pm, so maybe not all is lost.

I’ll know in a couple of weeks if I blew 20 bucks or not 😉