{"id":9131,"date":"2015-02-21T08:59:58","date_gmt":"2015-02-21T13:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/?p=9131"},"modified":"2015-02-21T09:02:42","modified_gmt":"2015-02-21T14:02:42","slug":"enough-already","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/2015\/02\/21\/enough-already\/","title":{"rendered":"Enough Already"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s supposed to get all the way up to 25&deg; today! <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-content\/plugins\/ckeditor-for-wordpress\/ckeditor\/plugins\/smiley\/images\/yahoo.gif\" \/> And as punishment, we&#8217;re also supposed to get another 6&#8243; of snow. <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-content\/plugins\/ckeditor-for-wordpress\/ckeditor\/plugins\/smiley\/images\/blah.gif\" \/>. Since being over three feet below average at the end of January, we have now gotten over four feet of snow in February and we&#8217;re now about two inches over our average for the season. And that&#8217;s in Syracuse &#8211; I have no way to tell what we&#8217;ve gotten here, except to say we&#8217;re feeling a little claustrophobic.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/fr_window2.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The dogs are getting pretty bored as well. The snow is well over their heads and they can&#8217;t really go anywhere I haven&#8217;t shoveled a path for them (which at least keeps them from hopping over the fence). I watched a herd of deer struggle to get through the snow earlier this morning (jumping like crazy just to move a foot or two). I don&#8217;t know what they&#8217;re finding to eat out there, and I feel terrible for them in all this cold. Them, and all the other critters out there that don&#8217;t have the sense to hibernate for the winter (something I truly wish I could do). <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m trying to decide if I need to go to Costco this week, and I&#8217;m thinking that no, no I do not. I&#8217;d like to get some gas before it goes up any more (after an 18&cent; per gallon jump last week, it&#8217;s only gone up another couple of cents this week, so I should probably go). I think I&#8217;m pretty much set for food, though, and I should probably quit spending money to save up to pay the heat bill (though to tell you the truth, it&#8217;s the damn electric bill that&#8217;s killing me).<\/p>\n<p>I guess all the money I&#8217;m saving on beer (36 days w\/o a beer, and 2,989 days until retirement &#8211; I put it in a spreadsheet) is going straight to NYS Gas and Electric. Well, and also to the dentist. Plus I got screwed on coffee mugs.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;d think it would be fairly easy to find coffee mugs for sale. Specifically, I was looking for black mugs to fit my office decor (ideally either what I have come to find is called &#8220;funnel&#8221; shape &#8211; like my &#8220;Car Talk&#8221; mug, only black &#8211; or, failing that, &#8220;bistro&#8221; shape). This appears to be something impossible to find in stores. Or at least the stores I go to (which, come to think of it, is basically Costco with an occasional trip to the grocery store &#8211; which I frequent very rarely since what I don&#8217;t get from Costco I get from Amazon).<\/p>\n<p>So I found something called Discount Mugs online. Let me say right off the bat that I do not recommend them (in fact, for the benefit of the search engines out there: &#8220;Discount Mugs Sucks&#8221; &#8220;don&#8217;t buy from discount mugs&#8221; &#8220;Discount Mugs Blows&#8221; &#8220;Fuck Discount Mugs&#8221; &#8220;Discount Mugs Ripoff&#8221; &#8220;discountmugs.com sucks&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>They had some mugs that looked like what I wanted, and they offered &#8220;free&#8221; samples (so that I could see if I should order 1,000 of them with my family crest on it for the big family reunion coming up). Free meant free, with $5 per each for shipping. So I ordered three blank sample mugs. I figured five bucks per mug wasn&#8217;t a great price, but not terrible either. So after a week or so, they arrived, and as soon as I picked up the box and heard the telltale sound of rattling ceramic, I knew something was wrong.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/brokenMug2.jpg\" alt=\"Discount Mugs Sucks\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Yeah. Two out of three were broken (and while I like the way they look, they&#8217;re pretty goddamn thin &#8211; coffee poured in the one unbroken one cooled off in about ten seconds). So I went to their site where they have a claim form for broken shit that they send you, and I uploaded a photo (&#8216;cuz god forbid they believe me) and they promptly responded with an offer of &#8220;store credit.&#8221; Well WTF am I gonna do with $10 store credit? I said, &#8220;hey, whattya say you send me two more unbroken mugs instead?&#8221; To which they responded offering store credit again. To which I responded, &#8220;no thanks &#8211; I&#8217;ll write it off as a bad investment.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I mean, these things came so poorly packed that there&#8217;s no way I&#8217;d expect them to ever ship me an intact order. I&#8217;m surprised that one mug made it through, and if 67% of every order is going to come broken, there&#8217;s no way I&#8217;m ordering from them again. Hey, prove to me you can ship one intact order, and then maybe I&#8217;ll buy some shit from you. But to give me a credit of $10 that probably wouldn&#8217;t even cover the shipping on whatever broken crap you&#8217;re gonna send me next? I don&#8217;t think so. <\/p>\n<p>Plus the mugs were made in China &#8211; probably by slave labor using some kind of lead\/melamine poison glaze.<\/p>\n<p>So &#8220;fuck you Discount Mugs&#8221;. Did I mention that &#8220;Discount Mugs Sucks&#8221; and that you should &#8220;never buy from discountmugs.com&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>Of course, my experience may not be typical (though based on subsequent reviews, they seem to be known for shipping broken shit).<\/p>\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s getting late. I guess if I&#8217;m gonna make that Costco run, I&#8217;d better get going.<\/p>\n<p>Have a good one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s supposed to get all the way up to 25&deg; today! And as punishment, we&#8217;re also supposed to get another 6&#8243; of snow. . Since being over three feet below average at the end of January, we have now gotten over four feet of snow in February and we&#8217;re now about two inches over our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9131"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9135,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9131\/revisions\/9135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}