Coffee heat rising

Gaaaahhhh! Wouldntcha know it?

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Well… Of course you’d know it. We all know it:

Computers Crash.

And when do they crash?

Right:

When you’re tired.

When you hurt all over.

When you most need the damn thing.

When you least feel like farting with the damn thing…

WHY is that?

Fortunately, I have a subscription to Best Buy’s “TotalTech” service. That lash-up, by the way, is worth the price in spades! Three times I’ve had to call those guys out here. They show up at the house and they bang around and fiddle around and actually FIX the damn thing. Without me having to unplug stuff and tote it up to a shop. Need to call them now — it’s 7:15 p.m., but they claim to be reachable 24/7. We shall see, in a few minutes.

The thing is reloading now…sorta…at the speed of a snail swimming through a bowl of honey. I’m hoping if it can be forced to reboot, it’ll kick back on. But…well…don’t have much hope.

The machine is a certifiable antique. A very, VERY old iMac. I use it mostly as a TV set — that’s what I tried to rev it up for this evening: to watch PBS News. Looks like that ain’t going to happen.

For ordinary computing tasks — word processing, Excel, cruising the Web, and whatnot — I use a newer MacBook. Even that’s getting pretty old now. But it still works, and I like it because I can loaf in a comfortable chair or on the bed while playing on the Web. Mostly the iMac serves as Command Central — a number of tasks that keep both machines online and operating run through that thing — and to amuse myself while I’m standing in that room ironing clothes. Plus it has to be turned on for the printer to work. No iMac, no printing from the MacBook.

Okay, it sllllllooooooowwwwwwlllleeeee arrived at the end of the black reboot bar…and now seems to be hung there. Am I going to shut down and try to turn it back on?

Don’t you just KNOW this is gonna mean I have to to buy a new iMac, to the tune of how many berzillion bucks?  And since I’ve about shut down the editing business, that adventure won’t even be tax-deductible. Helle’s Belles!

{sigh}

Okay, got it to turn off — with some difficulty. Now to wait for…oh, say…five minutes or so and then try to turn it back on. Har har! good luck with that, eh?

The timer looks kinda peaked…probably out of battery juice. How do I NOT feel like tracking down batteries,  IF the stash still contains any that fit in that thing…

…

… …

… … …

And now it’s sorta rebooting, or trying to: verrrrrrrrrrrrreeeee sllllloooooooollllleeeeeee

Yea verily, my guess would be it’s not gonna reboot.

Oh damn oh hell…now am I gonna have to buy a new computer, on top of all the other mechanical headaches?

Its little reboot bar is c-r-r-a-a-w-w-w-l-i-i-i-n-n-n-n-n-g-g-g-g-g-g across the screen. Silently, ever silently. My guess is that if the thing reboots, it won’t be in our lifetime.

Set the timer for five minutes. If it hasn’t rebooted by then, I’ll call TotalTech (24 hours! Even at 7:30 on a Friday night!) and try to get somebody over here.

In the Berzillion Bucks Department, the refrigerator that AMEX extracted, for free, from the sleazy B&B Appliances outfit, while less than optimal, IS running.

Five Minutes Later

Still crawwwwwwwllllliiiing. But it’s sllllooooowwwwwwwllleeee nearing the end of the reboot bar. Better wait another five or ten minutes to see if it gets there and, if so, what happens then.

How do I hate this computer stuff? Lemme count the ways…

Believe it or not, back in the heady days of the infant IBM PCs, I used to be highly techie. For the time, that is.

But the techie stuff left me behind. Truth to tell, I just lost interest in it. So in very little time — a matter of months, really, I was in the dust.

And never felt much desire to crawl out of the dust, truth to tell.

Okay, let’s play a game of Klondike Solitaire on the MacBook, then go in the other room, shut down, and try to reboot the iMac come Hell or High Water.

You know and I know that will cause the damn thing to crash in flames, right?

Well. Believe it or not, thanks to American Express I have a functioning, relatively quiet refrigerator…flat-out FREE.

AMEX made the sleazy B&B Appliances refund my money, 100%. Not long afterward — a day or so — the weird noises ceased and the fridge started to work normally. It’s still obviously a rip-off: you can tell it was damaged and broken in several places, which they tried to cover up. BUT…it does work. So…that would mean there’s no need to run right out and drop $850 to $1,000 on another refrigerator. Especially since I’ll be dropping that much or more on a new computer.

Half-an-hour or 40 minutes later…

Endlessly on the phone with the Best Buy “geeks.” The soonest they can send a tech over to work on the thing is the 22nd.  That’s five days from now.

Five days in which I cannot print anything…because for reasons that I’ve never been able to figure out, the printer will talk ONLY with the desktop iMac. It won’t print anything from the laptop unless the desktop is turned on AND working.

Jayzuz!

Ohhhh well! at least they are gonna come over, and I don’t have to drag the damn desktop in to the store and try to explain the problem.

To perfect this predicament, next week I have a “virtual appointment: with MayoDoc. Cripes! If anything happens to the laptop, I’m not going to be able to do that…and knowing the way things have been going — whatever can go wrong will go wrong — you may be damn sure that the laptop will go on the fritz that very morning.

Best Buy’s “Total Tech” crew cannot be beat…at least so far, in my experience. Those guys have been great. I could do without having to wait the better part of a week (that’s unusual: they usually show up the next day), but since I’ve shucked off the clients, there’s no real need to HAVE to have a functioning printer right this minute. My son will print anything crucial, I’m sure. WonderAccountant, who’s across the street, might do it in a pinch…if I can work up the nerve to ask her. But by and large, nothing urgent has to be done.

Which reminds me…we DO have a new (if cheapo) printer stashed in there…if push comes to shove, I can ask the guy to connect that. Probably won’t produce copy that looks as classy, but it will produce…something. Probably. Maybe.

Over to Lowe’s this afternoon to look at LG refrigerators. Those seem to be the highest-rated of the whole lot. And yes, Lowe’s does have LGs, and by golly, they have one that is exactly what I want! A stripped-down model: top freezer, bottom fridge, each with one door (not two), $900.

Having been bopped about the head and shoulders over the Great Refrigerator Purchase, this time I refrained from whipping out the charge card. But think in a day or two I’ll probably go over there and buy one.

It’s a challenge to my cheap-skateitude! The evil local dealer’s unit is working reasonably well now. It’s noisier than I’d like, but not so much as to keep you awake all night. And thanks to American Express, I’ve got it essentially for free! They refused to take it back (they’re not kidding about their “no returns” policy) and AMEX refuses to pay them. So that leaves the thing in my kitchen.

On the one hand, I’d like never to see it again (to say nothing of never to hear it again…), but on the other…hey: what we have here is, when you come right down to it, a free refrigerator.

  • Is it brand-new? Probably not.
  • Does it have a few dents? Yep.
  • Has it likely seen some repair work? No doubt.
  • But does it work? Sure does….

So…to the cheapskate mind, it just seems downright foolish to replace it with a $900 unit.

3:30 a.m.

A-n-n-d…to make things perfect, it looks like a long-ago, potentially life-threatening infection is recurring. I should get in the car and start driving…driving…driving out to the Mayo. But…forgodsake.

Not. Now.

on and on and endlessly on….

Gettin’ all computer-hassled out…

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Or maybe that’s “all hassled out,” in a more general way.

Tried to get in to Funny’s dashboard this morning. It wouldn’t take my password.

Tried again. It wouldn’t take my password.

Tried again. It wouldn’t take my password.

Tried…on and on.

Dug out the email address for BigScoots, the better to pester them. Type type type…

Tried again. This time it accepted the password. The SAME password I’d just entered repeatedly.

Yes. I do understand the need for computer security. I get hack attempt after hack attempt. Yes. And scam after scam after scam lands in my email inbox. Every day. Yes. I do know — from experience! — that there are large mailing lists organized by age, which sales hustlers use to target the marks they figure will the most vulnerable. If you’re over about 70, they figure you’re ripe for the taking.

As dawn cracks, for example, just in the e-mail inbox (not counting all the other possible avenues for scamming) we have

Hi Victoria,
I’ve selected a few opportunities you may want to explore. Apply directly if interested. If you’ve moved recently or would like to see different jobs click here and help me better serve you.

Have I applied for a job lately?

Nooooooo

Have I contacted this outfit in any way, directly or indirectly?

Noooooooo

Do they think I’m stupid as a post?

Sure enough

This morning I have to visit Young Dr. Kildare — his office is many miles closer to my house than the Mayo is, and so I’ve taken to seeing him for minor ailments, reserving MayoDoc for the heavy hitting. This is another nexus of computer hassle: every time you visit, they want you to sign into their annoying “Portal” and fill out redundant form after redundant form after redundant form. My computer will NOT let me into the thing, no matter what fu*king password I try. So I have to show up 15 minutes early and beg a staff member to help.

This is complicated by the fact that my appointment is for 9 a.m. — and they don’t open till 9 a.m.

but… <hard return hard return>…waitwaitwait!!!

lookee here! I’ve…

ESCAPED!

OMG! A miracle has happened.

I can’t believe it!

The night-long overcast has coalesced into a steady, pouring rain. The road crew out front has run off, presumably to a coffeeshop, leaving an army’s worth of equipment out in the road. I looked at that weather and thought…ohhhhhh shee-ut! Time for a strategic prevarication.

{grrrrr grrrrr…} I will be dayumed if I’m driving up the gawdawful Cave Creek Road to YDK’s office in the rain, through the rush-hour traffic under dusky early-morning skies.

one ringy-dingy
two ringy-dingies

Phone lady picks up.

I prevaricate extravagantly: “The city is digging up the road — apparently the sewer system has gone awry. [true; and true] I can’t get my car out of the garage [fake] and so it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to get up to your place by 9 a.m. [faker than fake].”

She buys it!  Or at least, she kindly pretends to buy it…so I’m outta there.

Actually, the ailment that led to this morning’s appointment has magically faded away. Ear weirdness: felt like (are you ready for this one?) a strand of hair had somehow worked its way into the ear canal and was poking me in the inner ear.  Just in the past hour, though, that sensation (which I’ve been enjoying for the lo! these many days) has pretty much gone away.

Soooo…here we are, loafing in an easy chair, watching the rain and enjoying the enforced silence out front (soon to be broken, whenever the heavy machinery can be fired up). If I had any sense, I’d go back to bed and try to catch a few extra Z’s before these guys get down to work.

But no one has accused me, not lately anyway, of having any sense.

Tony’s Home for Wayward Delinquents is quiescent. Some of the kids live there; others are bussed in by van each morning. Strange. Do they close down when it rains?

Unlikely. Could be, though, that the city warned them that all mechanized Hell was slated to break loose this morning, so they may have arranged for the least stable of their inmates to be kept elsewhere today.

For awhile, I thought he’d acquired the house next door to the south of the Institute. But…now I think that doesn’t appear to be the case. Hard to believe the city would let him glom more than one house in a row to convert into reform schools.

What. A. Place. If I had any sense — and my son would pipe down and quit threatening to have me institutionalized if I dare to sell this house — I would move far, far away from here. EVERY DAY is a new litany of crime and craziness. And since the ‘Hood is bordered by the tired and sleazy west side, just on the other side of Conduit of Blight Blvd., and by one of the most dangerous slums in the state just to the north of Gangbanger’s Way, one does not feel very safe here. And one is bloodywell not very likely to extract enough from sale of a home here to move into anyplace safer other than the dreary, depressing Sun City.

Ain’t it fine?

Gas station barricade–wheee!
QT Employee stabbed! Yeah: you can walk there from here, no problem…
Build-to-Rent: The newest rage in real estate. Uh huh…that’ll add a lot of class to this area
Escaped prisoner captured in Phoenix Hotel. Hmmm…how d’you tell the difference between an escaped convict and the local yokels?
Body found in local canal. That’s about 20 blocks from here. You could walk there from the university.
Cop creamed in crash; suspects run off.
Another officer-involved shooting. This one, at least, is a distance from the ‘Hood. For a change.

One could go on and on and on. The local news runs like this every day, and a substantial number of the Happenings occur near or in the ‘Hood. This is why I drive across the city to go to a grocery store, rather than walking or driving to the nearby Albertson’s. It’s why I’d rather drive almost out to the university — any day! — to go to the Sprouts, rather than buy at the one within walking distance of the Funny Farm.

Computer hassles. Real-world hassles. Good grief! Where do I go to buy a cave in the red-rock country of southern Utah?

Ben FrantzDale, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

The Birds Are Gone

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On a beautiful morning like this — cool and clear, the kids across the street playing, the dog roaming about, the coffee cooled down to drinkable temp — the side yard would normally be alive with doves, sparrows, and wrens. Not so today.

This is the first morning all winter that I’ve decamped to the westside deck to swill the remainder of a the breakfast pot of coffee. And y’know…there’s not a single bird out here. This, presumably because I haven’t hung a feeder full of seed out here in months — not since we were enjoined to quit feeding birds, because of a bird plague that was holding forth. Apparently, though, I was about the only one who knocked off feeding them. We can hear mad chirping and frolicking coming from somewhere across the road…no doubt someone else is luring them that way.

In fact…let us get up, stumble out front and see if we can spot where they’re congregating…

**

Nope. Wherever the attraction is, it isn’t visible from the front yard.

What is visible? The aging paloverde tree in front, the one I had planted when I installed all the desert landscaping. It’s sagging to the east, and come the next stiff windstorm, very probably will fall over, pulling up a fair amount of gravel and fake “hills” with it. And likely knocking down the tree next to it.

Hm. I could have it taken out. Or just wait until it falls over and see if the homeowner’s insurance will pay to clean up the disaster area.

Meanwhile, in the Department of Home Improvements, the new refrigerator has about stopped making its obnoxious, loud noise.

Check out the saga, if you haven’t been following along:

Chapter 1: Kickoff
Chapter 2: Run-Run-Run-Run-Runaround Run-Run-Run-Run
Chapter 3: Fiasco Central
Chapter 4: Fridge Fantasia
Chapter 5: American Products in the Can

The criminal refrigerator is now working reasonably well, if you can imagine. At least, it works for the time being. Its motor still makes more noise than I would like, but it’s not intolerable. The problem, evidently, is that the vendor sold me a damaged item, but forcing them to take it back appears be outside the realm of possibility.

BECAUSE I had, at the behest of an older and wiser neighbor, charged the damn thing on my American Express card (rather than paying for it out of pocket, as I’d planned to do), AMEX went in for the kill when I called and reported the antics described in these parts. They not only refunded my money, but they seem to have so intimidated the vendor that the crooks have never come and retrieved their clunk of a refrigerator.

In the meantime, I called a repairman who, with what we might call minimal effort (all that was needed was one, count it: 1 screwdriver!) managed to get rid of the contraption’s most annoying noises. Upshot: even though I surely would prefer a better unit, what I have now does work and does not require me to close the bedroom door to sleep at night.

Hence there’s no hurry to run out and buy another refrigerator. Eventually, I will. But…not now.

The message being, I reckon: ALWAYS charge major purchases on a major credit card! No matter whether you pay for the purchase on time, or in one fell swoop.

***

Hmmmmm…. Lookee here: I need to put up new Cat Barriers.

Tony the Romanian Landlord’s “Other Daughter” (as opposed to the one he calls his “Pretty Daughter”), who lives two houses to the west of the Funny Farm, is a cat lady. She collects the damn things — it seems to be one of her psychoses. When I had a vegetable garden, the beasts hopped over the fence and converted it to their personal outdoor sandbox…rendering all the veggies I was growing inedible. Tried putting mouse traps along the top of the wall, but the cats had no problem negotiating their way past those things. So now I strap strips of carpet tacks to the decorative row of block that tops the wall. This DOES work effectively to keep the little darlin’s out.

Looks weird. Annoys the Hell out of me. But annoys me one helluva lot less than cat shit in the veggies.

Surprisingly, they’ve lasted quite a long time — several years. But after all this time, the weather has pretty well done them in. So…before it gets hot outside, I’d better take them down and replace them with fresh strips.

Another little household task I could bestir myself to take on — before it gets hot! — is fertilizing the roses, which haven’t been fed in several seasons.

***

Aaaaahhh shee-ut! Cop Copter just barged over, flyin’ low.

He seems to have moved right on, though: probably headed to the scene of a crime in some other precinct.

I am soooooooo tired of the endless round after round after round of Events here! If I could move away, I would be outta here so fast it would make your proverbial head spin.

Where would I go?

Ideally…Oro Valley, a suburb of Tucson nestled against the foothills of the Santa Rita mountains. Less than ideally but probably OK: Prescott, once the state capital but now your basic tourist trap. Both venues are very pretty…relatively low in crime…large enough to possess most of the amenities one would like in an urban environment (adequate medical care, decent shopping, reliable utilities that don’t require you to truck in propane, something resembling a cultural life, proximity to airports, pleasant enough housing). They offer many qualities that this place doesn’t have and don’t harass you with many of the negative things that you have to put up with here. Like crime, crime, and more crime…

HowEVER… My son is dead set against my moving away from here. I believe he may want this house, which is several decades newer than his place, or that he wants me and his dad to stay within easy driving distance as we stumble deeper into senescence. Neither of us is more than about 10 minutes from his place, and our location puts each of us within easy shooting distance of not one but two major hospitals.

Oro Valley and Prescott; either one is a good two- to three-hour drive from here. Even Fountain Hills, which is conveniently close to the Mayo and many a mile from the local blight, is about 45 minutes away. One-way. I expect he realizes that if I were to move, it would be to someplace a good long way from these precincts.

Ohhh well. Speaking of moving on: up, up, and awayyyy!

Why are American products in the can?

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Because nothing better is on offer, at least not for what most people can afford?

American consumers tend to look for the best they can afford. When they find there’s nothing any better than what’s on offer, they take what’s on offer. Eventually manufacturers realize that if they keep their production standards low so as to keep (at least some) prices low, people will buy products built to a lower standard: cheaper to produce than the older, better-quality products were, and easier to sell lots more units.

Car manufacturers have been forced, by government regulation, to produce vehicles that have at least some safety features that we didn’t have back in the “good” old days. Fine: cars have shoulder harnesses and effective brakes and at least something more than a layer of plastic between you and the oncoming. It would be hard to argue that automobiles are not better than the ones we had in the 1950s. Lots better.

But now look at appliances:

Stoves that have no real burners: just sheets of glass with hot spots. Fewer details to have to clean: true. But problematic when it comes to popping corn, to any kind of preparation that requires rapid changes of heat, to creams and sauces that require accurate temperature control.

Refrigerators that clank and clonk and grind and roar but work no more effectively than your mother’s did…maybe less so.

Ovens that reside in a kitchen cabinet….very handy. And they’re self-cleaning, also exceptionally handy. But the heat emitted by an oven set to “self-clean”…what does that do to the wooden cabinetry around it? Nothing, maybe…or maybe we don’t wanna know.

Microwaves are extremely…uhm, kewl. We didn’t have those in the good ole’ days. Cooking the breakfast bacon left you with a pan holding a puddle of grease to clean up, and there was no such thing as heating a bowl of soup or a dish of leftover spaghetti in 60 seconds.

Sometimes I think — maybe le mot juste is “know” — that the sense that newer ain’t necessarily better is a function of old age. Yep: I’m getting crankier. I’m getting more and more reluctant to have to learn new devices and new procedures to do tasks that have always been simple and inexpensive to accomplish. This Brave New World of ours ain’t for the faint of heart.

Or for anyone who’s sot in her ways… 😀

Have to drive down to the dentist’s this morning. Don’t wanna.

But not because I don’t want to visit the excellent dentist, but because I just don’t want to drive to 16th Street and Maryland right this minute.

It’s not very far. No. But…the roads will likely be blocked with construction and certainly clogged with lunatic nitwit drivers. People around here seem to lose touch with common sense when they get behind a steering wheel. They jerk around. They run signals. They ride the center lane. They drive 25 mph in a 35 mph zone. They refuse to get out into the intersection when preparing to turn left. They refuse to turn right on red, nevvermind that no traffic is coming. They tailgate. They get into the fast lane and drive so slow they invite their fellow homicidal drivers to tailgate.

Ugh!

What used to be fun — driving around town — has evolved into an unpleasant experience. I used to love to drive — in fact, sometimes used to waste gasoline just puttering around exploring the city. No more! If I could never have to get on the road again — private car or public transit — I’d be happy.

And I suspect that sentiment applies to other modernized tasks, like shopping. Yeah…like shopping for a GD refrigerator.

Fridge Fantasia!

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The Saga of the Singing Refrigerator gets ever more fantastic.

A fine and handsome refrigerator repairman came galloping in on his white charger yesterday morning. Not only was he pleasant to look at, he was very smart and quickly solved the problem.

Turns out a flap of plastic along the bottom of the unit’s back side had worked loose. One screwdriver was all it took to tighten the damn thing down, and voilà!  Buzzing, humming, banging racket GONE.

CAN you believe that?

It cost me $95 to fix it.

He didn’t seem to disapprove of the vendor, B&B Appliances, as much as I now do. But he did allow as to how it’s pretty evident that the unit was not brand-new, as alleged. He thought it had probably been run for awhile and then returned to the store.

Yeah. Waddaya bet it was returned because of the racket it was making?

Its motor still runs loud. But it sounds like normal motor noise, not some sort of loose screw.

Y’know…I’m an old bat and I’ve had a lot of refrigerators over my lengthy lifetime. Hm. Let’s think about that…

> Parents’ house: beach house outside of Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia
> Parents house: portable house in camp, Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia
> Parents’ house: block house in camp, Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia
> Great-grandmother’s house, Berkeley, California
> Parents’ apartment: San Francisco, California
> Parents’ next apartment: San Francisco, California
> Parents’ apartment: Long Beach, California
> Parents’ next apartment: Long Beach, California
> Parents house: Sun City, Arizona
> My & my room-mate’s apartment: Tucson, Arizona
> My apartment: Tucson, Arizona
> My apartment: Phoenix, Arizona
> Husband’s and my apartment: Phoenix, Arizona
> Husband’s and my first house: Phoenix, Arizona
> Husband’s and my second house: Phoenix, Arizona
> My next apartment: Phoenix, Arizona
> My apartment downtown: Phoenix, Arizona
> My next house: Phoenix, Arizona
> My present house: Phoenix, Arizona

Hmmmm…. That’s NINETEEN refrigerators! Oh, no: make that TWENTY. We lived in our house downtown long enough to buy a second refrigerator.

And this thing in the kitchen now is the only one that ever emanated weird noises. For whatever reason. Certainly not for any such flimsy reason as “a paper-thin piece of plastic was not bolted down tightly.”

  • Give.
  • Me.
  • A.
  • BREAK!

Not a single one of those other 19 fridges ever banged, rattled, or carried on. None of them sounded like a freight train a-rollin’ up the tracks.

If this kind of performance is “normal” or something like it, then…well… We are lookin’ at some serious degradation in the quality of our lifestyle. In fact, GE appliances overall are highly rated, despite a generous share of consumer complaints.   It appears that the 21st Century leaves something to be desired.

Like, maybe…competence?

ARE you kidding me???

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HOLEE mackerel! How do vendors get away with this stuff?

This morning I went over to Amazon to buy a new bread knife. I dropped  my venerable old serrated bread slicer on the floor, and wouldncha know…it broke apart. And in such a way that I couldn’t glue it back together.

No problem, thought I: that Walmart up in Sunnyslop surely will have them!

Well. No.

Ohhhkayyy… Then of course the Albertson’s, which carries every doodad known to personkind, will have it — just means I have to brave walking through hordes of panhandlers to get in the door.

Pleasantly surprised to find the Albertson’s has hired a security guard to lurk outside the door. Get inside without incident. And…get back outside without incident — and without bread knife.

Whaaa??? A MEGA-supermarket replete with car parts and pots and pans and magazines and books and make-up and allergy pills and whatnot doesn’t carry one single freaking bread knife?

I bought this knife, I think — it was a LONG time ago — at a department store (the Broadway??) or at Williams-Sonoma in Biltmore Fashion Square.

Department stores are pretty much defunct in these parts. The Biltmore is way off my beaten path. The vast shopping mall called Metrocenter, practically within walking distance of my house, closed down completely a few years ago, in the process killing the Broadway, Dillard’s, and every other store that used to hold forth there.

Dayum! This means I’ll have to wait a day or two to get the thing delivered from Amazon and, more to the point, I won’t be able to look at it and handle it before deciding whether to buy it.

Okay, okay…over to Amazon. Thereinat we find this fine device: $169.

A hundred and sixty-nine bucks??? For a bread knife? You’ve gotta be kidding me!!!

Well, you get the kewl Chinese character…I guess that’s worth something.

Wusthof, about the best brand you can buy, has this excellent-looking model, for a mere $150:

Most of my knives are of this ilk, purchased back in the day when I was married to the corporate lawyer and could afford to pay no attention to what things cost. But even then, I can assure you, I would not have paid $150 for a kitchen knife, let alone $169.

Move on: finally I found this thing by Mercer:

That looks a great deal like the deceased, except mine had a nice wooden handle (hold the plastic, please!). Twenty bucks. Actually, less than that: $18.58.

Ohhhkayyy…. That’s more like it. Probably too little to pay, even: it suggests the thing is junk and will last about ten days. Still…it has 301 ratings, adding up to a five-star score. Can’t be all that bad.

Can you imagine? Who pays $150+ for a freaking serrated bread knife?

What a brave new world we live in…