Cotton-Pickin’ Days

Royal Robbins is one of my favorite casual clothing labels. Great for weekend wear. While in Singapore, I picked up two pairs of these Backcountry Shorts and was tickled to see they had adjustable button waistband tabs.

Adjustable button waistband tabs let you compensate for weight lost over long backpacking trips or the added bulk of varied layers of clothing.

I wonder if I’ll ever have any need for these waistband tabs. I can button them to the tighter fit now but if I loosen them up, it’ll be because of the added bulk of a good meal rather than layers of clothing.

BTW, I only wear shorts at home. I stopped wearing them out over 10 years ago.

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My monthly personalized coupons from Sainsbury’s supermarket arrived today. Not only did I get six with my name on it, I was mistakenly sent another six for a Miss A.T. What do the different offers tell you about our shopping habits?

For Mrs. H Lei:

• £1 off when you spend £5 on ready meals
• £1.50 off when you spend £10 on fresh fruit & vegetables
• £1 off when you spend £5 on frozen meats, fish, poultry & frozen foods
• £1 off when you spend £6 on fresh pizzas
• Earn triple Nectar (Sainsbury’s reward program) on a £60 shop – two with different expiration dates

For Miss A.T.:

• 50p off when you spent £4 on bakery products, including cakes
• £1 off when you spend £7 on fresh fruit & vegetables
• £1 off when you spend £4 on cooked meats & sandwich fillers
• £1 off when you spend £5 on cheese
• Earn triple Nectar points on an £80 shop – also two coupons

These coupons tell me that Miss A.T. makes a lot of sandwich lunches with a piece of fruit included. She makes so many of these sandwiches that she has to buy £80 before she gets triple reward points.

In contrast, my own coupons show that we buy quite a bit of prepared meals (most are actually pre-marinated, uncooked meat). And, we’re not big shoppers at Sainsbury’s because of the lower purchase amount needed to receive triple reward points. Makes sense because we do 1/4 to 1/3 of our weekly grocery purchases at Marks & Spencer.

What do your personalized shopping coupons say about you?

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Don’t look back.

So hard to do especially when it comes to books. I need to tattoo Amazon on my arm to remind myself never to buy a book from an actual bookstore.

This morning, I finally went to Hatchards, “booksellers since 1797″ and “booksellers to the Royal Household.” (Nobody looking remotely like Royalty was in the store at the same time as me although the clerk had a posh prep school air and there were a few businessmen wandering about.) I’ve never bothered before because it didn’t look like the type of place that would welcome children. Knowing that books are almost always cheaper at Amazon, I would have been happy to buy a canvas bag or a bookmark emblazoned with HATCHARDS but they had none of that.

Imagine that! A bookstore that only sells books.

I was determined to get my shopper’s experience, though, and picked up The Rough Guide to Genes & Cloning as well as The Changing Face of China: From Mao to Market at full price. Not content to say I’d been, I could not resist double checking the prices when I got home. And of course, the books are both selling at Amazon.co.uk for about 30% less than cover price.

AHHHH!!!! Why oh why do I never learn?

At least I got two free paper bookmarks out of the deal but do you think they’re worth £7?!

*By the way, Hatchards is owned by retail giant Waterstone’s. Yet another reason why Hatchards is really nothing more than a name.

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Last Friday, I was minding my own business when I saw this note on Chris Garrett’s Facebook:

Chris is wishing he had ordered more Nespresso pods.

That piqued my interest because I had recently used a picture of someone’s display of Nespresso capsules at Eye on DNA although I had no idea what those things were. The wall hanger happened to look like two colorful X chromosomes and I liked that. Definitely a sign.

So I spent the rest of Friday researching and obsessing over Nespresso. By the end of the day, I’d put in an order for a Nespresso D290C Concept Automatic Espresso Maker. It arrived this morning. And exercising great restraint, I only tested one regular cappuccino and one decaffeinated. Marv even went out of his way to get me amaretto syrup for my latte tomorrow morning.

The Nespresso coffee is hot, strong, and smooth. Perfect! Here’s a video demo of the machine I purchased.

Happy 35th birthday to me! (Six weeks early to boot.)

Update: Nespresso is clearly not going to leave any coffee lover high and dry when they run out of coffee capsules. I ordered the one-time offer welcome package yesterday and it was just delivered a mere 24 hours later. Very impressive.

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Of all the household chores I have to do (and that is ALL of them), I hate vacuuming the most. The hand-me-down Sanyo vacuum I’ve been using for the past year is so old that I can only get replacement bags online. At some point last year, I noticed the wiring in the plug was loose so I pried it open and tried to rewire it without a clue as to the proper configuration. I promptly shocked myself and didn’t feel quite right for the rest of the evening.

I survived and managed to get the vacuum working again, but I’ve had to repeatedly rewire the plug because one of the wires inside broke and is too short to stay connected properly. Anyway, I don’t know why I’m going on about this except that vacuuming is the bane of my existence.

So when the old vacuum had to be rewired for the balumpteenth time last week and I was down to the second-to-the-last vacuum bag, I threw a fit and said that I MUST HAVE A NEW VACUUM. Preferably one that is capable of sucking up hair because the old one was utterly useless. (And it’s plain old human hair no less, not from furry fuzzy fizzy pets.)

Marv said, “OK. We can go compare prices this weekend.”

To which I replied, “I don’t want to compare prices!! I want to get a @#! new vacuum cleaner.”

And this is what we came back with:

An Electrolux PowerPlus 1900W Z4494 (the vacuum in the picture is the same color as ours but is only 1800). It’s tons lighter than our old machine, which is especially important in our four-story house. And the suction power is fantastic.

But does having a new vacuum make me want to hoover it all up? Does a new vacuum give me joy and hope for a cleaner tomorrow? Does a new vacuum that hums instead of whines bring a song to my heart?

Nope. Vacuuming still sucks.

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I’m having a fabulous time on vacation even though I caught another cold. That’s 4 for 4 this year. AHHHH. Doesn’t keep me from shopping. So far, two great pairs of shoes and a watch. Woohoo!

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Nothing beats a new bag to help you see things in a different light.

Linen bag with white faux leather trim from Benetton.

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Last month, Marv gave me my first MP3 player, a SanDisk Sansa e260. It works like a dream – transferring files is very easy, the control dial is easy to manipulate, and the functions are very intuitive. There’s just one problem.

It gets scratches from nowhere.

The first couple of weeks I had it, I didn’t even bother putting it in the little felt case. I carried it around in the back pocket of my small Kipling shoulder bag or my coat pocket without a second thought. Then one day, Marv wanted to borrow it and he noticed a few teeny tiny scratches on the right side of the screen that I could barely see unless I had it in the right light. A few days later, I got another half centimeter scratch in the lower righthand corner of the screen even though I was hyper-conscious of being careful. (Shhhh. Don’t tell Marv.) Time to get a screen protector.

Who knew these little MP3 devices get scratched so easily? I’ve read complaints about them all, particularly iPods. And did you know that there are a bajillion different ways to protect your MP3 player? There are hard cases, leather cases, silicone cases, plastic films…. After hours of research, I chose a Shieldzone full body invisibleSHIELD, selected the free shipping option, and 25 days later, I still haven’t received it I finally received it. They haven’t answered my emails and their site appears to be down today too (site is back up). I’m giving them another week before I open a dispute claim with PayPal.

Meanwhile, I’ve come up with a solution that seems to be protecting my Sansa fairly well and costs no more than a penny. Check it out.

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Just saw this over at Georganna’s Writer’s Edge. If you subscribe to one of the over 500 featured magazines available at Amazon, from now until January 17th you’ll get a $5 coupon code for every one. Magazines make great gifts so check it out (aff).

FYI, for the latest in magazine goodness, see Amazon Newsstand’s blog.

Update: This is not a hint because I already have subscriptions to these magazines (or buy them when the cover interests me), but here are my favorites:

• The Atlantic
• Scientific American
• New Scientist – UK edition
• Oprah (sometimes if she’s not being too preachy)
• Vogue
• Vanity Fair

What magazines do you like to read?

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Mainstream media has finally caught up with the 40% off Threshers discount coupon I posted about last Sunday. So now I’m getting lots of people here at Cotton-Pickin’ Days looking for the Threshers coupon. Hellloooo all you people looking to buy cheap alcohol!!

The Times UK has a list of other online discount offers specifics of which are listed at Hot UK Deals.

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