Some Blog Site

I thought I was safe.

I got the Home Depot credit card so I would be left alone. When the cashiers would ask if I would be paying with a Home Depot credit card, I could answer “Yes” and then I wouldn’t be asked if I would like to get one.

I also have a good answer for when one of their specialists is standing in the main aisle and asks me about my furnace. I don’t have a furnace, so I don’t need it tuned/replaced/fixed/updated/serviced or anything. The house is heated via a combination of hot water and electric baseboard and burning corn. But that’s another topic.

Last week I was buying some routine items from Home Depot and the cashier asked me if I would be paying with a Home Depot credit card. “Yes,” I answered, secure in my immunity from further questioning.

“Would you like to add another authorized user?” she continued.

What is this? Are they never happy?!?!

“No thanks.”

Maybe the Pro Desk cashier doesn’t have to ask upselling-type questions. I’ll try that check-out and see. If they do, then I’ll have to stick to the self check-out lanes.

We met some acquaintances at a state park: Nelson Ledges.

It’s a fun place for kids and a stressful place for parents. If you read my review of Letchworth State Park last year, this may sounds familiar to you.

Nelson Ledges is a scenic place, although on our day there were a number of rambunctious and/or reckless teenagers (or they could have been in their lower 20s, but I don’t have a good term for them that fits like “crazy teenagers” does).

Now for the pictoral tour through Nelson Ledges:

This was the start – just a walk along a forest path.
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One of the joys of buying a home is finding all the things the previous owners did to it. I know I used my first house as a learning experience to know how to and how not to do certain repairs/improvements.

I am redoing one of the closets in our house. I pulled off the boards that held up the old shelf in the closet and found this:

Apparently there was not a studfinder handy when he installed that shelf. And just in case you think it was an isolated case, here is the other wall of the closet:

The board wasn’t that long, about 15″ maybe.

On the plus side, I now know where exactly the stud is and where it isn’t.

A little bit of spackling and paint, and no one will ever know. As long as they don’t read this post.

Today’s post is going to be several thousand words long, assuming I get to convert each photo into the standard word count.

We had our last big snowfall of the season this last weekend, so we took some photographs as it was picturesque.

Our backyard.

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I registered as a member at the Home Depot website. Which means that I get their emails. Which means I am a target of their marketing.

So they sent me this email:

And I doubt that it was “handpicked”.

My guess it was an algorithm that determined which items they would like to sell, and then they sent me and everyone else in my area those items.

They were not picked especially for me. Nor were they picked by hand. The items were picked by computer for a group of people.

I don’t know why it bothers me that they say that. I ignore those emails anyway. The only emails that get my attention are the 10% or 15% off for this week emails. I add things to my Home Depot shopping list and wait for the coupon. Then I go buy them when they are discounted via the coupon. Emails with random (to me) items that you want to sell are not going to catch my attention.

After mulling it over for a few minutes now, I think I do know why it bothers me – they are misusing the word “handpicked”. It has a specific definition, which they are ignoring to further their marketing purposes. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. But now it’s the marketer who cried handpicked. By the time someone who actually handpicks things tries to use it, it will be meaningless to the public and they won’t care about handpicked anymore.

So, please, use “handpicked” correctly. Save it for when it is true.

And don’t get me started on mass email that contain the phrase “personally invite” or “personal invitation”.

For no reason at all, here are some balloons that my kids drew some faces on.

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Here are some thoughts I jotted down that aren’t quite sufficient for their own individual blog posts. If you’re the type of person who likes Twitter, pretend each of these is a tweet.

• It doesn’t matter how old you are – anything imaginary outside your bed can be magically shielded by a simple bedsheet.
• Your house is clean, with no fruit flies. You bring in fruit and let it sit. Fruit flies appear. Magic, or does every piece of fruit you buy contain fruit fly eggs?
• It’s more fun to imagine that, for all the newly-formed local minor-league and rec teams that end in FC, the FC stands for Fight Club rather than soccer.
• Why did they settle on GOAT to mean Greatest Of All Time rather than BOAT for Best Of All Time? How about COAT or MOAT?
• I’ve been toying with the idea of bringing a weighted red handkerchief to meetings at work. Then if someone says or claims something I think is wrong, I could toss it in their direction. Challenging things in such a manner would certainly liven up things, or maybe I’ve just been watching too much football.