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Nifty new toy

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The Barbecues Galore grill I bought a year or so ago experienced its third truly scary fire the other day, the second that was certifiably dangerous.

First time, M’hijito was present. The grill has a drip pan for grease, very nice except it’s about an inch above the propane tank. That caught fire in a big way. I’d managed to turn off the burners and was about to approach it with baking soda in hand when M’hijito pointed out that it was so close to the propane and so hot there was some real chance the tank could explode.

Exit the spectators, stage left.

To everyone’s relief, the fire burned out before it had any spectacular effects. After that I was really careful to be sure the drip pan didn’t collect any grease.

Last week the whole darn thing caught fire. It took three or four cups of baking soda to put out the flames, which, as you can imagine, didn’t do the grill any good. Or the remains of the food, not that any of it would’ve been edible anyway.

At this time of year, Lowe’s and Home Depot are having a frenzy, trying to get rid of their unsold barbecue grills. In Arizona that’s weird, because outdoor cooking season starts about in October and extends through May. But those huge warehouse chains operate on East-Coast time, totally out of sync with local reality.

Also out of sync with The Budget of the Coming Depression. Prices of new propane BBQs range from around $300 to around $700. On sale.

Moving on….

Yesterday I picked up a Weber kettle grill, figuring that with the chimney-style charcoal lighter I already had, I could manage somehow to cook the occasional steak or hamburger over charcoal.

Hilarious! In the first place, a part was missing. But more entertaining: unlike the old, sturdy, solid Weber grills, this thing appeared to have been made by hammering out a few beer cans and bending them into kettle shape. It was so lightweight that when you lifted it by the front handle to move it around on its two wheels, it wanted to tip over backward.

Moving on…

Returned that to Lowe’s. Saw nothing else desirable here. Onward to the Depot.

YES! They had the very smoker/grill thing that M’hijito, the Exceptionally Brilliant Chef, uses to turn out incredible food. How much? $157!

One heck of an improvement over the cost of a gas grill, and you can’t blow up the neighborhood with the thing.

Early this morning I put up Gerardo the Lawn Dude to helping me wrangle the thing into the car and then get it out and into the backyard. Being the macho sort of guy he is, he also saw to it, once he’d put it in place on the slab behind the fireplace chimney, that every bolt and nut was solidly tightened down.

It’s really nothing but a metal barrel with vents, a chimney, and some racks. You have to cure it, much as you’d cure a cast-iron skillet, by painting the entire interior & the grills with vegetable oil and then burning a slow fire inside it for two or three hours. It’s undergoing that process as we scribble. Tomorrow: grilled hamburgers par excellence!

Gerardo. As usual, he wouldn’t take any extra pay. I tried to gift him with a half-dozen Coronas and a fistful of tree-ripened limes. He took one, drank it on the spot, and declined the lime.

This is a cultural problem. How am I going to express some appreciation to this lovely man without offending? I’ll think of something. Maybe food: homebaked brownies? He has a cute little kid and a wife who has hit the 21st century running (she doesn’t cook).

Oh, how he coveted the tractor-style riding lawnmowers. While we were waiting for the HD guy to come along with a large piece of equipment to retrieve the last assembled smoker/BBQ from its shelf near the ceiling, Gerardo tried out every one of the tractor lawnmowers. What could a bright, hard-working young man do with one of those things?

Well, I figure at Christmas maybe I can give him a bonus, either cash or a generous HD gift card. Either one, I expect, would go a long way toward improving Gerardo’s business. Must start saving up.

At any rate, thanks to Gerardo I now have a large, down-home, amazing barbecue and smoker Thing that will do handsomely to cook up some mighty fine vittles. And it didn’t bankrupt me.

Hold the dish detergent, please

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Here’s a little discovery: liquid laundry detergent works as well as (maybe better than) dish detergent, and it costs less. Possibly it can be made to cost a lot less.

In the past when I’ve burned food on a pan and not wanted to scrub it clean right after dinner, I’ve carted the dirty pan out to the utility sink, squirted a little laundry detergent in it, added water, and left it to soak. The laundry detergent seems to work a lot better than dish detergent to soak off stuck food.

I don’t like perfumes and dyes either in the kitchen or the laundry (but I draw the line at paying extra for so-called “natural” products because of the high scam potential), and so I buy Kirkland’s Ultra liquid laundry detergent and clear Ivory dish detergent. I transfer the Ivory into a vinegar cruet, partly because it gets the advertising off my kitchen counter (which is not Proctor and Gamble’s billboard!) and partly because you only need a tiny fraction of the detergent dispensed from a squirt bottle—a hard-sided container with a dripper top is a lot more economical.

Last week I was running low on dish detergent and on cash. Having made up my mind to stick to as many no-purchase days as possible, I decided that if I ran out, I’d substitute a little laundry detergent. That led me to wonder whether using laundry detergent would be more or less costly, per squirt, than Ivory dish detergent.

Wonder no more! The results from today’s Costco/Safeway run are in.

The Safeway brand of clear, relatively unadulterated laundry detergent is 7.99 cents an ounce; at Safeway, Planet eco-friendly detergent will cost you 19.98 cents an ounce. Kirkland’s clear, relatively unstinky liquid laundry detergent and its “green” variant are both the same: 7.64 cents an ounce.

Ivory was selling for 9.96 cents an ounce at Safeway.

You probably could get Ivory cheaper somewhere else, and if you don’t mind blue, green, or orange dye in your cleaning products, you’d no doubt pay less to wash your dishes.

The difference between the Ivory and the Kirkland detergent is 2.32 cents an ounce, not an inconsiderable amount—especially if you wash all your dishes by hand.

Now, laundry detergent is highly concentrated. If you wanted to use it at the kitchen sink, you could dilute it with water—probably by a fair amount!—and still have an effective dish detergent. And that would represent a real savings.

Costco scores in customer service

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If I weren’t already sold on Costco, its staff would have won me over yesterday.

Headed home at the end of a workday made interminable by the mind-fuzzing effects of a two-week-long spate of insomnia, I made a run on Costco. I needed several food and household items and, most urgently, gasoline. First I stopped at the Target, where I found some place mats that would do (sort of) as companions for the new dishes. After a nice long stand in line at Target’s check-out, my American Express card wouldn’t work. Swiping it brought up an error message. The cashier tried to swipe it on his machine and then looked stymied. Stunned with exhaustion, I decided I didn’t need those placemats (knew that…why’d I ever think otherwise?) and told the guy to forget it.

Now I stumble into Costco. I’m so tired I literally feel weak in the knees. The prospect of trudging through acres of merchandise to pick out the half-dozen things I need only to arrive at the check-out stand and have them reject my credit card: ugh! It’s more than I can contemplate. So I stop by the customer service desk, where I ask a gentleman named Glenn if it’s possible to tell if the card has a hold on it.

Well, yes, there is. He checks it and discovers no problem. Barely coherent, I explain what happened at Target. He suggests I call the number on the card, printed in submicroscopic characters, and ask. I say I can’t read that number. Now—amazingly!—Glenn directs me to a telephone at the far end of his counter and dials the number for me! After a relatively brief navigation through the robotic punch-a-button maze, I reach a fellow who tells me the is account is in good standing.

So I trudge through the acres, retrieve the goods I need, and show up at the check-out. There, my credit card won’t work. I explain, no doubt altogether incoherently by now, what’s been happening. The cashier calls for a supervisor, and one Ernesto shows up. He punches in the card’s number and some sort of code, and thereby he makes the card work. Hallelujah! He says the magnetic strip has given up the ghost and advises calling AMEX and asking for a replacement.

Imposing some more on Ernesto, I ask if this means I can’t get gas at Costco, adding that I’m almost out and can’t get to work without a refill. He instantly comes up with a solution: pay upfront by purchasing a Costco cash card.

“How much gas do you think you’ll need?” he asks.

“About $50 worth.”

Presto-changeo, he produces a $50 cash card and adds the cost to the food bill.

Wonder of wonders. It worked. Stick the card in the pump and it lets you buy $50 worth of gasoline.

What a relief. I really didn’t want to have to find another gas station on the way home—wasn’t even sure the car had enough gas to get home.

Glenn and Ernesto’s kindness went a long way toward making a trying day tolerable. Not only that, but the discovery about the cash card will make it possible for me to buy Costco’s gas again before the new card gets here. American Express informed me that it will be the 19th before a new card arrives—that’s ten days! If I insist on going to work every day, the tank will need a refill before then. So, another Costco cash card is in my future.

Saved from my own fecklessness

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This weekend the fates conspired to keep me from spending money.

A week or two ago, while running around town with a friend who was looking for a particular combination of furniture, I came across some dining room chairs that exactly fit the description of the fantasy chairs I imagined would go with the table I bought four years ago. My mother’s kind of Shakery looking chairs work fine with this table, but I’ve always believed that a set of wheatback chairs with wicker seats would be just the ticket. When I got the table, I thought it would be fairly easy to find such a thing, but no! Months and years have gone by, and I’ve never spotted exactly what I wanted.

Until I came across these. They looked much like the one in the picture here, only in a nice medium walnut finish, not painted black; and the design is a little more polished. Perfect: $315 apiece, marked down for a moving sale.

Ohhkay….six of those would come to $1,890, plus 8.3% government gouge equals $2,046. A bit stiff, especially since I’d drained my diddle-it-away savings to buy the sideboard I’ve also been craving for the past several years. Four of them would cost $1,362. And there was some degree of hurry: the store is moving to a part of town that’s a long way from where I live, into an upscale area way too rich for my blood. I hardly ever go there; with the cost of gas where it is, I’m unlikely to venture out in that direction, even to get something I really want. Besides, the sales guy indicated the chairs weren’t about to sit around his floor for long.

So I dropped by on Friday and asked if I could buy just one on approval, to see how it would look with the set. No problem. Schlep this home, and…

Yeah, it looked really, really gorgeous with the table: like they were made to go together. But…

But the dining room is separated from the family room by a step up: the dining room is a slightly sunken room, so you make one step down from the dining area into it. Satan and Proserpine, the previous homeowners, took out the infelicitous wrought-iron railing that further delineated the spaces, creating a broad open area where nothing interferes with the sight line. The family room is the nicest and prettiest room in the house. When I sit at my accustomed spot at the table, I can look across the table into this lovely room with its big fireplace, skylights, Arcadia door, and handsome, simple furniture. I really like enjoying the view of the most pleasant room in my home.

Well, the chair backs are high enough that when you sit at the table, what you see is not the room but the back of the chair across the table! Nice chairs, but not what I want to gaze at while I’m dining alone. My mother’s chairs are low enough that they don’t intrude.

Saved from diddling away $2050 on unnecessary furniture! Back to the store the chair went.

Onward to more unnecessary objects: At Pier One, I recently bought some new dishes, my old set being scratched up and very tired. They’re mostly bright yellow, with blue trim here and there. To go with them, I wanted a set of cobalt blue placemats.

Think anyone, anywhere carries cobalt blue or navy blue placemats?

N-o-o-o. Not a chance!!!!!

After driving from pillar to post in search of a mat to go with the dishes, I finally found the perfect thing at Sur la Table. They had five. I needed eight. The saleslady called the catalog to order me three more: no way. She now suggests I drive halfway across the city to their other store to pick up the other three mats. I decide not.

While I’m walking around The Great Indoors, a repository of some of the most hideous products of the School of Ugly Design available anywhere, it occurs to me that one doesn’t really need table mats. Why use a placemat on a table whose surface is made of reclaimed European warehouse flooring, two-inch-thick slabs of polymerized pine with layer after layer after layer of dark wax rubbed into it? The thing is impermeable! A little water or wine spilled on it will wipe right up.I have a perfectly fine table cloth that can be used for guests.Why do I need placemats at all?

I don’t. Do you?

One less thing to spend money on. One less thing to have to wash and iron and put away.

We have a lot of STUFF in our lives that we think we need because we’ve always had them and our parents always had them and so that must just be the way things are done. Do you find that’s so? What’s in your home that you don’t really need?

“We Value Your Business”: Reaching a person at a company that doesn’t want to be reached

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As we saw in yesterday’s encounter with Qwest, many companies—often those with a vested interest in customer service—do not want to deal with the unwashed masses with whom they are forced to do business. They make it as difficult as possible to reach a human being, because they don’t care about their customers and do not wish to waste time speaking with them.

There are several avenues to get their attention.

You can often get through to a live human by calling a phone number listed at Get Human. This useful site lists telephone numbers and strategies for getting past the punch-a-button maze.

Failing this, try googling the company’s name + “corporate headquarters.” This often will bring up a snail-mail address and a viable telephone number; sometimes a working e-mail also will appear. Invest in a stamp to send your comments or complaint by snail-mail. This was how I got an address for Steve Jobs, during the late, great MobileMe fiasco. I printed out my post, “An Open Letter to Steve Jobs,” and mailed it to Cupertino. Interestingly, an underling in Apple’s corporate offices telephoned me –several times! –to discuss the matter. Didn’t succeed in fixing things, but at least he pretended he cared, which was comforting.

Apple Computer
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA
408-996-1010

A search for Qwest’s corporate headquarters gives us this intelligence:

1801 California St.
Denver, CO 80202
For general inquiries: (303) 992-1400
or (800) 899-7780
Fax: (303) 896-8515
Customer Service

Investor Relations
(800) 567-7296
email:investor.relations@qwest.com

Qworst’s customer disservice link takes you to another infinite loop, wherein you have to register and reveal private information before you can wander through an off-putting maze in your attempt to get some help. However, in a past experience I learned you can reach a high-ranking P.R. officer by contacting investor relations. So, that’s where I sent a link to yesterday’s rant about the company’s execrable DSL customer service.

When you believe you’ve been treated unethically or actually cheated, think about what regulatory agencies and trade groups govern the offending corporation. For example, banks and credit unions are regulated by a national banking commission. Insurance companies are to some degree regulated by state agencies. The U.S. Attorney General is interested in frauds and scams that cross state lines. The state attorneys general in your own state and the state where the company is based also may be helpful. Even if they can do nothing, management in general does not enjoy receiving a telephoned or written inquiry from an attorney general’s office; often a simple notice from a regulatory or law enforcement agency will spur a response to your issue.

Also consider contacting companies whose employees have to do business with a wide variety of vendors. Your complaint probably isn’t the first; if you get in touch with agencies or companies serve as intermediaries, you may find a way through the maze.Your credit-card issuer, for example, may have a telephone number that will reach a person at the problem company.

It takes ingenuity and persistence to get past the ramparts erected by megacorporations, which are specifically designed to repel all comers. But keep at it: if you can’t get through, try to enlist the aid of an agency that can.

B-a-a-a-d basselope! Frugality 0, Spending 1

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Okay, I fell off the frugality wagon with a resounding thud this afternoon, cleverly managing it at a moment when I probably should be pinching every penny that comes my way. What the heck: life’s short and tomorrow we die.

For several years, I’ve been quietly watching for a sideboard that would go with my dining room table, please my finicky tastes, and not bankrupt me. Right now there’s a console table sitting in the dining room, the sort of thing you put behind your sofa to hold a lamp. That’s what the table’s doing there: holding a lamp. It has no storage, and storage is desperately needed, given that the former homeowner’s kitchen remodel was beautiful but short on cabinet space. So I’ve wanted something with shelves and maybe even a couple of drawers.

Today a friend and I headed out in search of a desk to fit a small space in her house. After several hours spent traveling across the city, exploring many new stores we had never visited, we ended up at the Crate and Barrel, which is having a summer sale. And what should we see but…ta-DAAA! Not just “a” sideboard on sale, but THE sideboard, marked down $550.

At $1190, the price was still a bit rich for my blood, but I do have it in my diddle-it-away savings. True, it will drain Diddle-It-Away to zero, but why does one have diddle-it-away savings if one does not intend to diddle them away? It is incredibly gorgeous. It’s also set up to serve as a media center, so if I have to move to a smaller house in the future, it’s versatile enough to adapt to a different purpose.

Even though I’m sure I could have acquired something cheaper, this is well made with solid wood and mortise-and-tenon construction, and it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. M’hijito will get the console table — also a very nice piece of furniture — and I will now have a place for serving items presently stashed in a back closet and in the garage. So I guess I don’t feel too guilty…after I get over the sticker shock, I’m sure I’ll be very happy I bought it. Especially if I don’t lose my job….