Just what I needed

A friend rescued me from my house and took me to the place that everyone else has heard of, but was new to me.  Daiso Japan is like a international ninety-nine cent store, except you better bring more money because almost everything is $1.50.  I wish I had known about it earlier since it had so many things that our international student had been looking for.

Of course it had things I had not been looking for, too.

I did not buy chair socks.

I bought only one basket and gave it away as part of a housewarming gift.

I was very, very tempted by origami paper, but I really have enough for the moment.

I bought clothespins and used them right away, which justified buying them.

Flora

It was so frustrating to drive down Indian Hill and see this building.  I knew something was different but I simply could not remember what it had looked like before.  I mentioned my frustration to my teenager, who suggested looking on Google Earth.  Good idea.

This is what it used to look like.  I hope the first picture is not the final one.

Gratitude

I am guessing I should thank a combination of mathematicians and computer scientists for figuring out that I was not the one who spent $1400 at an electronics store and therefore rejected the purchase.

The sad part is that I had memorized that credit card number and now I suppose that space in my brain needs to be used for creating all new passwords.

Out with the old

The dishwasher came with the house sixteen years ago and we had never truly loved it, but it had worked well, especially when we used higher quality detergent. It was sad when the water pooled and the lights wouldn't turn off. D. read the materials and watched the videos, but still couldn't fix it.  He predicted that the price to have someone else fix it would be more than one-third the price to replace it.

That process felt like an old joke.

Shopper:  One dollar for a pound of bananas?  The grocer down the street sells them fifty cents a pound.
Grocer:  So why don't you buy them there?
Shopper:  They're out of bananas.
Grocer:  When I am out of bananas they are thirty cents a pound!

We found plenty of cheap prices for the model we wanted only to learn they were sold out.  We finally found a match, but they had only black and D. wanted white.  Finally it was ordered and delivered.

Why pay for someone else to install it when you can do it yourself for free?

It is in, it works, and one of the kids said our kitchen looks like a magazine now.

A Place I Love

I went to the library with a short list of books to get, not including books on hold (latest Caldecott winner, sequel to a book D. and A. are reading together, and a book for A. to read on his own).

This book was on my list and was right where it should have been.

This book was on my list and was not where it should be
and the reference copy was missing, too.

I looked all over in case it was misshelved,
and ended up with these books, too.
Four extra books is not so bad when you consider all
the books I contemplated and did not bring home.

Weather

When we were in Denmark and using Celsius instead of Fahrenheit like we do in the U.S., R. taught me this ditty.

Quick digression - what is the difference between Centigrade and Celsius?  Below is what I learned from about.com.

Depending on how old you are, you might read 38°C as 38 degrees Celsius or 38 degrees centigrade. Why are there two names for °C and what's the difference? Here's the answer:

Celsius and centigrade are two names for essentially the same temperature scale (with slight differences). The centigrade scale is divided into degrees based on dividing the temperature between which water freezes and boils into 100 equal gradients or degrees. The word centigrade comes from "centi-" for 100 and "grade" for gradients. The centigrade scale was introduced in 1744 and remained the primary scale of temperature until 1948. In 1948 the CGPM (Conference General des Poids et Measures) decided to standardize several units of measurement, including the temperature scale. Since the "grade" was in use as a unit (including the "centigrade"), a new name was chosen for the temperature scale: Celsius.

The Celsius scale remains a centigrade scale in which there are 100 degrees from the freezing point (0°C) and boiling point (100°C) of water, though the size of the degree has been more precisely defined. A degree Celsius (or a Kelvin) is what you get when divide the thermodynamic range between absolute zero and the triple point of a specific type of water into 273.16 equal parts. There is a 0.01°C difference between the triple point of water and the freezing point of water at standard pressure.

This all started because I checked the weather last night and saw this forecast.

I thanked R. for teaching me the poem, which R. learned from Q is for Quark: A Science Alphabet Book.  It was under the section S for Système international, also known as the metric system.  There are people who support the adoption of this system in the U.S. (to improve patient safety and education), but those people do not seem to have much influence.

In Our Backyard

Last week Thrifty ice cream was written up in the food section and this week was something from the other end of the frugality scale.

We had a gift card to use so we stopped by today.

The Norwegian goat cheese was for old time's sake since we used to eat it in Denmark, the ricotta salata was chosen to go with kale, and third one, Bishops Peak, was written up in the newspaper.  Mmmm.