And Then The Lights Went Out

Mom and I were grocery shopping on Friday at a major grocery store (Loblaws/Superstore) and the power went out.  That's never happened to me before.  It looks deserted but isn't, was full of people shopping for the busy weekend.  Most of them went immediately to the tills.  Mom and I decided to continue shopping and by the time we got to the tills they had 3 of the 15 tills on auxiliary power.  They could take cash only at first, then realized they could take cc - only those with chips (no idea why).  It only set us back an extra half hour and I really did not want to go to a different store or come back the next day so we waited.  Kudos to the staff who kept the crowd organized and calm.  A few people left without paying immediately, what a  mess to put back those carts of groceries.  It turns out 3000 people were without power as I got home and we had none - it came on within minutes though.  Apparently a bird and a transformer had a bang up.  It was a bit surreal though, think zombie apocalypse.  In the end it reminded me that I always need to carry at least $100 cash at all times.  Usually I have between $20-60 cash but will ensure I have more from here on out.  And in the end I used my credit card.  I felt sorry for all those people trying to get into the store that had walked there or gotten rides there as it was raining and they wouldn't let any new people in until the power was restored.


This week I've been working on a major project to change web hosting with our company website.  Thank goodness we have a really good friend who is a computer tech to hire as our old web hosting company is shutting down with only 30 days notice.  I don't ever want that to happen again so we are going to be doing our own web hosting and just hiring techs(our friend for now) to help me fix/build it.  A real pain in the butt in our busy season.  Not very much time and the old site had a ton of issues I knew nothing about with poor security and outdated plugins.  Once we get the hosting transferred this week we will be rebuilding it again with many improvements.  We are just lucky that our friend is so knowledgable and trustworthy and that I worked with him before in my part-time job so know his skill level.

On the upside we are going away next weekend for 2 nights to Ucluelet with Buddy - it will be our 13th Wedding Anniversary on the 24th so we decided to go away for the weekend to celebrate.  We both need it.  I don't care if it rains the whole time, we can read, watch boats from the cabin deck, barbeque and if it doesn't rain do some hiking along the coast.

This week I was gifted a huge bag of overripe pears.  Mom and I made 14 jars of pear butter (like apple sauce then add pectin and can making it thicker) with cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  It tastes pretty amazing.  I have a bunch of blackberries in the freezer, I need to make some jam out of them asap so I have room in my freezer for a thanksgiving turkey.

I blew the grocery budget this summer so starting in September was over ytd by $180.16 so this month the budget is $575-$180.16 = $394.84 to try and catch up.  I am already at $349.99 so am hoping at least the reduce part of the overage by months end.  Our fridge and freezer are full but I need to buy a couple of things for our weekend away.

Hubby was away in Toronto this week so I managed to clean our entire house, wash carpets in the 3 rooms that still have carpets and then do the same at Mom's house.  I love having a clean house but it rarely stays that way.

And food for thought:  seen at Walmart last week near the checkout

If you are going to try and entice me to buy chocolate while waiting in the line to check out, do you really think you should be tagging it as an impulse category for me to see?  No, I didn't buy it :)