Whatever

Not Fair

Last Friday when I posted about the stove, the last line “Inau?gural meal pre?pared on our new range ? pizza.” was going to have a link to the Home Depot page of the range. But when I went to the page for it I came away shocked, we had bought the stove on Sunday the 19th and on Tuesday the 21st it went on sale for $101 less.

Donna called the store and spoke to someone in appliances who told her that all we had to do was bring in the receipt within 30 days and they would refund the difference. Saturday morning we headed into HD with our paperwork and a print out of the web page showing the new price. The first person we spoke to at the service desk was unsure of what to do, but a person who seemed to be in charge or at least more knowledgeable arrived, heard our story, said so & so will take care of you and disappeared into the office. So & so got part way through the process and then stopped stumped. She hailed over person number 4. This person said, “Oh we aren’t supposed to do that.” We planted our heels and Donna said, “Well, the person I spoke to in the Appliance Department last night said we could.” “Who?”, she asked. “Didn’t get a name,” Donna countered.

She chewed her cheek for a while with her fingers hovering above the keyboard, before saying, “Follow me.” We went over to the Returns Desk where she refunded us the cost of what we paid, then sold us the stove again at the sale price and gave us the difference back on a store gift card (a different one from what we used to buy the thing, so now we have two.)

If we had been turned down for getting the sale price, we were going to borrow a pickup from a friend and return the darn thing, telling them it didn’t work or something. Then take the money and go buy a new one at the sales price, even if we would have to wait another week for the 2nd stove to be delivered.

Can’t Believe It Has Been 11 Days

Since we last had a working stove. Well, it took us a week to finally order a new one and then there was an aborted delivery attempt, so I guess I really can.

We ordered an oven temperature sensor from the local parts house, but when I picked it up, the conversation with the guy behind the counter (who has been in the business a long time) said he’d sell it to me, but told me I was wasting my money as he had never seen one that ohm’d out good be the problem. He said that it probably was going to be the clock board, AKA brain, and if I had one version of my model of the stove I could get a new board for $305 and if I had the other version, well, they didn’t make that part anymore.

We thought about buying a new stove from the new appliance part of their business, but never did get around there to do it. We ended up at the Home Depot around the corner from our house for 2 reasons. 1) It is just around the corner from us and 2) if we went to Kroger (right next door to the Home Depot that is right around the corner from us) we could buy a $500 gift card and get double points to use to knock a buck off a gallon of gas at the Kroger filling station (that is just around the corner from the Kroger store that is right next door to the Home Depot that is right around the corner from us.) By some fluke they were offering quadruple points, so now we have two separate fill-ups where we will get a buck off a gallon of the price of gas.

We were supposed to have it delivered on Wednesday, but when they called they said that delivery would occur between 1:30 and 5:30, so I called to re-schedule because we had a haircut appointment right after work and we couldn’t take a chance on missing it. The time frame could not be adjusted, but I could change the day. The next available delivery was Friday (today) between 5 and 9 PM.

Funny thing happened on that Wednesday after work. We showed up at the hairdresser’s place and the door was locked, the lights were out and there were 2nd and final delivery notices from FedEx stuck to the door. Huh? When we got back in the car to drive home Donna checked her calendar and discovered that we weren’t supposed to be there until the next day, Thursday. Then it came back to us, Sheri had asked us to change the day at our last appointment back in May because she was going to be on vacation. Crap, could have had the stove yesterday.

Inaugural meal prepared on our new range – pizza.

Peach Parade

The Miata got a sponge bath in the garage last night in preparation for the MMC’s participation in the Ridge Peach Festival in Trenton today. I send out an email to the Club stating that Donna and I wouldn’t do the parade without at least 6 cars and that is exactly how many showed up at the meeting spot for our drive to Edgefield for breakfast.

After breakfast we lost a car that wasn’t doing the parade thing, but fortunately there was one car waiting at the intermediate meeting point to bring it back to the required minimum. Donna had originally planned to walk up to the main viewing area and be a spectator because creeping along at 3 miles an hour in the hot sun is not something she cares to do, but the weather was unseasonably cool enough (upper 80’s) that she ended up riding along and throwing candy to the crowds.

The picture above is my favorite of the dozen or so photos I snapped today on the event. I captured a float behind us setting up before the start of the parade in the outside rearview mirror of the Emperor. I could tell they were a church group because the shirts the adults were wearing said on the front “Do you know Jesus?” The back read in big letters, “R U SUR”. I couldn’t make out the fine print, but hopefully it explained the missing E at the end of SUR or maybe the Bible book or passage demonstrated by the Wizard of Oz. It was an off the hip shot and I didn’t realize that I had captured the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion checking the Miatas out until I got home and downloaded the pictures. You can see the all the photos taken over on the MMC Website.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1039

Short & Sweet?

Have you heard of the Tweeter thing? Apparently all the hep cats are using it, so I thought I would try it out with the least techno savvy group of folks I know, the MMC. I opened an account for the Club and emailed every member the log in details and instructed them to tweet away.

In the intervening 24 hours there have been two tweets, both mine and both 24 hours ago. I do subscribe to a Google alert for the word Miata, maybe I should pick one of those links each day to tweet about. For now I’ve got a widget for the Master’s Miata Club tweets in my left outside sidebar.

Maybe I will create my own account for over there. That way when I can’t produce a whole entertaining post (like this one for instance) I can probably come up 140 characters.

New Not Noteworthy Stuff

The above photo is one of the nearly 30 Hyundai Sonata images I have collected from the web, that along with 10 of my own, form my current screensaver. Looks a little like a piece of H.R. Giger concept art for the movie Alien.

I added a photo gallery for the Sonata, but don’t bother to go look at it as there is nothing there that hasn’t been in a post over the last month.

I also added a page that displays the gas prices from all over the country via GasBuddy.com. As an interesting side, I live in a spot that has the lowest prices in the US. When we go on vacation this fall to see the giant trees in northern California we will be where the highest prices are.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1023

I Got Nothing

We rode our separate bikes over the DD on the west side of town for breakfast. We drove the Miata out to do a little grocery shopping and then we drove the Sonata to North Augusta for a BBQ lunch.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1022

Somebody Made A Mistake

We made a trip to Augusta after work and while we were there we passed a gas station that was advertising gas for $3.94 a gallon. This reminded me to check the gas gauge in the Purple Whale, it was below a 1/4 tank. Enough to get back in SC where the gas tax is smaller and gas is usually 10 – 20¢ cheaper.

We decided to fill up at our usual haunt, Krogers, where we get a dime off the price of gas because we are frequent shoppers. The sign on Pine Log Road said regular was $3.52 so it would only cost us $3.42 a gallon. As I was filling the tank I noticed that the price on the pump read 52 cents and I could have sworn that I hit yes when the pump asked if I wanted to use my reward points to save 10¢ a gallon. Then I did a double take, the cent figure did read fifty-two, but the dollar figure read TWO! Oooh, somebody made a mistake, somehow they shifted the decimal point one place to the right, so we got nearly 15 gallons for a little over 38 bucks when it should have been over $50.

Then I remembered the weekly flyer saying something about saving a dollar a gallon. Sure enough when I got home I checked on the Kroger site and there it was in pixels, redeem 1,000 points and save a buck a gallon, so no mistake.