Groceries Delivered – woo hoo.

Last summer some neighbors told us about this farm subscription that they had, providing them with fresh local produce weekly. We had just begun to hear of the Pittsburgh Slow Food movement from other sources so we were intrigued. This sort of thing is arrangement is called a CSA, about which you can read more here. Mrs. Bob and I are interested in eating organic and healthy foods. We are also interested in supporting local businesses. So this seemed like a natural fit.

In May, we tried to sign up for a CSA subscription with Kretschmann's Farms, but we ended up on their waiting list. It appears they agree to a limited number of subscriptions being left at each drop off point, and that too many people in our neighborhood wanted their services. Dang! In early to mid June I got a flier at work for a local company named Isidore Foods. While not a farm themselves, they are a new small local CSA distributor. They work with several local farms do distribute their goods, directly to consumers, the same way that CSA's do. Sounds like a good next step, so we decided to give them a go.

Last Thursday (6/26) my daughter and I drove to a neighbor's garage, and picked up our first box of fresh vegetables. It's amazing how many vegetables can fit in one box. Oh, and the strawberries….WOW , were they good. They are the one's on the left, and way better than their larger brethren on the right. There are a couple of new veggies in there for us. Mrs. Bob nor I had ever cooked beets before, and she's not overly fond of Zucchini (to say nothing of 6 in a week). But, we have committed to the CSA idea for the summer. Part of the commitment is that you get the vegetables that are in season this week, and you eat those. So, Mrs. Bob tried cooking both the beets and the beet greens. She wasn't overly fond of the greens, but I liked it all.

Week 1: good start! Next week we'll have to find some sort of cart to drag to our drop-off point 5 blocks away. This way we can burn personally stored fuel (really I should have plenty), rather than gas in the retrieval of our fresh veg. There was one item in our box that we couldn't identify. It's the picture with the quarter included for size reference. If you know what it is, please illuminate us. Tastes like garlic, but it is tiny. Maybe it's just tiny garlic.

Dueling movie sob stories

Start with this one: Be Careful What You Wish For

Then come back and read on...

So on Friday the family and I went to see "Kung Fu Panda," and I too was struck by the new pricing. I assume we were at the same theatre former known as Loews. Simplified structure huh? Used to be a movie that started before 5:00 (like ours at 4:50) qualified for the matinee rate. Oh well, one more way to gouge us. Next they will charge us for each piece of checked luggage (no wait that's someone else, and besides, I digress).

Back to the point. The crap is back, and worse than before. Rather than the crappy old slide show advertising with some annoying muzak, the crappy new “slide show” is clearly video, because there is slight movement in the 3-5 seconds that each ad is on the screen. And to make matters worse, each “ad” has its own accompanying 3-5 seconds of muzak. So you get a fade up, established crappy muzak, fade out…over and over and over. Hard to maintain a conversation over that up and down audio onslaught. Sheesh. And then it’s on to the typical sprint and Coke ads before the previews. So I am glad you enjoyed the brief crap hiatus.

But be careful what you whine about, however. It could be worse, as we learned the hard way. On Saturday my wife and I went out to see another movie (that’s two in the past six months for those of you in the audience with kindergarteners counting). This time because of the planned dining experience, we ended up at a movie theatre in Cranberry township. We thought: what’s the big difference. The tickets were even a dollar cheaper than those the previous night but…..

1. The air conditioning was out in the one theatre showing the movie we wanted to watch. It wasn’t too hot a day so we decided to chance it. In reality it wasn’t too bad, just a little muggy.
2. The seats themselves were some of the worst movie seats I have ever sat in. They were just plain worn out. Very uncomfortable. I did my “old man holding his back” walk out of the theatre.
3. We arrived about 5-10 minutes before the scheduled start time, and a slightly better version of the video crap ads were already running, so I thought maybe we’d get on to the movie not too long after the scheduled start time of the movie. A full 35 minutes after the scheduled start time of the movie, it actually started. Maybe 5 minutes of the holdup was previews for other movies, the rest of it was all ads. Aaaaakkkkk. Let me tell you we enjoyed losing that half hour of our lives, paying the sitter for that extra half hour, and all of us, the sitter included getting to sleep that much later…NOT

In the end we’ll pay the extra buck to go back to the first theatre, and apparently put up with the “new crap.” But we don’t go to the movies that much anymore anyway. This is just pushing us further from being interested.

Don't get me started on how much gas we used, and at what cost on that secon movie night.