I walked in the Giant Eagle on 2801 N. High Street yesterday and noticed their produce display was a bit spiffier. Each peach and nectarine seemed to be arranged just so. The strawberries were ALL pretty good looking too.

I don't think it's a coincidence. A while back I submitted some feedback on the Giant Eagle Feedback Page. I was contacted by two managers asking me about my concerns. I told them of a few specific examples that were troubling to me in the produce area (inexcusable flaws given their exhorbitant pricing and the season). One manager said he'd address it and voila! Check it out. Looks much better. Not perfect still but a lot better.

No need to thank me, just doing my job as a consumer advocate for Columbus.

A local public service message:

This is for Edward. A small Columbus crowd reads this blog and I mentioned I'd do anything I could to help. Edward's the dedicated manager of Clintonville Community Market. He was posting signs looking for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible for the slaying of his friend and CCM associate, Michael Cleveland (fee and registration required) who was murdered on the 25th of August at 139 E. Hudson, around 10 pm. Darn close to home. No apparent reason. One shot to the chest. The loss is tragic. He was a young, well-liked guy. Any clues should be called in to the Columbus Police: Homicide 614-645-4624.

I hope she doesn't mind (email me quick and I'll pull the post immediately if you object), but a regular reader wrote to invite the wife and I to a show at Cafe Apropos (473 Third Ave). Beth Amsel is playing September 25th. I suspect readership is low enough on this site so this shouldn't cause a riotous crowd to show up and destroy the place. I think we'll try to make it, babysitter permitting.

Just as important as this friendly offer, I was made aware of a new cafe. I had never heard of this place and dropped in for a quick cup of coffee this afternoon between errands. It's delightful. Apparently, the place has been in the works getting ready to open for almost a couple years and it's been open about several months so far. Seems to be doing well. And about a quarter of the square footage is dedicated to wine sales. Decent prices and selection. And, the best part, they will eventually sell wine for consumption on site. Lots of silly beaurocratic stuff to get through first but it'll happen.

Wine and coffee at the same location. Trivial . . . if you're in France. Cafes that serve wine aren't common in Columbus (are there any?). There exist restaurants, of course, that serve both but no place for just a quick glass of wine or coffee. I find this exciting. Someday, I'm gonna get a group of Columbus bloggers, blog surfers and anyone who just wants to hang with me to get together socially and this venue is promising, but that's fodder for another post.

Thanks AL.

The prurient olympics.

My favorite place on the web to SEE the news is Yahoo! photos. The images change throughout the day reflecting the happenings around the world. Juxtaposed are images of desperation and death with exhuberance and victory.

However, the photographers for Olympic Beach Volleyball dropped it on this one. The men's competition is depicted as a raucous, wild, highly competitive event. The women's is depicted as a series of plotless, soft-core porn scenes filled with derrier shots and butt-pats (now I know why women like watching pro football). It's not too hard on they eyes, it just doesn't capture the competition that characterizes the Olympic Games.

There is a clever site called Photo Stamps. You upload an image and a flash app generates a stamp from it. It's a real $0.37 stamp. The stamps cost about $0.85 ea. if you buy 20. I figure this one would be a good stamp to kick off an Anti-Atkins campaign. "Pasta, it is too good for you"

The past few days, I've watch a few sheep. A lot of sheep.

I've seen The Anchorman in the middle of a week day. I actually stayed until the end of the movie. It was bad. Waiting to see the movie I was sitting in the lobby in front of a video game depicting people killing each other. One of those combat kind of games. Loud, tasteless and lots and lots of killing. I went over and just unplugged the game. No one in the lobby seemed to care. I felt vigilant. I may make it a hobby.

We went to the The Spaghetti Factory and chased Frankie throughout the entire restaurant as Trish and I alternated jamming food into our mouths and chasing the little one.

We had a low-key play group on Sunday and got to see the newest addition, Anthony, a cool and very tiny little baby.

We got Frankie her first pair of "walkers"; size 3 1/2.

We prepared materials to get Frankie ready for her big day tomorrow. We're just not ready. She's still a baby.

I mentally prepared myself to walk into work, suck it up, get numb and get to work. "Work - don't think", I'll tell myself. By next July, things will change.

Things I'm doing to get over the intense pain of hearing about a job I deserved but didn't get:
1. watching little hopping sheep (this was the cartoon used to celebrate Frankie's birth)
2. listening to Dub Side of the Moon, a reggae version of Pink Floyd's Dark Side, it's good.
3. fuming
4. doing a zillion push-ups
5. fuming
Today, I'm Carlo, beaten.

. . .condolences in the comments

I'm sick of it. The prices our newest supermarket charges appear to be about twice that of our old "Big Bear" they took over. Sometime in the next couple weeks I'm going to do some comparison shopping between the Giant-Eagle, Kroger and Meijer and see who's cheaper. Here's my list so far of representative items we buy weekly.

Then I'll publish the list here on this site for the entire world to see, or, at least a thousand people or so. This should bring the Giant-Eagle to their knees. Stay tuned.

Today we had a street-wide yard sale. Our new neighborhood, now 4 years new, is becoming a place we're quite comfortable in. The landlords are slowly giving way to single families and those families are some great people. Don't get me wrong, we dearly miss our good friends from Baltimore; obviously, no one will ever be able to replace frequent contributor to MLB.com and good friend the Wiseman or Susan or Dave or Sharon or John or Iris or ... We're happy to be here but we do plan to get back to Baltimore to see a film festival or hang out at a Christmas Eve party. Promise.

Happens to all the good ones. A website, unlike television or other media formats, gets more expensive as popularity increases. Dooce.com, probably one of the most popular blogs is contemplating ways to make revenue to pay for her bandwidth and supplement income. And her site's mostly text. I think she has a readership near that of Drudge! It's amazing. Should be interesting to see what evolves. I hope it doesn't go fee-only. It's such a fun read.

In a previous post, I mentioned seeing the Butter Cow at the Ohio State Fair. I didn't make a mistake, it's an actual cow-size sculpture of butter. And, standing beside it this year, are Lewis and Clark. It's a cow, Lewis and Clark. All made of butter. Those crazy Ohio dairy farmers.

We went to the Ohio State Fair yesterday. We saw the butter cow, ate pork, a corn dog, went on the merry-go-round, saw many sheep, chickens, ducks and geese but didn't quite make it to the deep-fried twinkie.

The Ohio State Fair starts today. I'm fairly certain there's a conspiracy among little old lady bakers in Ohio to prevent me from competing in the "French Bread" category of household arts. I've signed up now for 2 years and never received my entry materials and unfortunately forgot to follow up. I saw entries from last year and I would have easily kicked butt. Oh well, enjoy your reign one more year you conspiring gang of bakers; next year I'm getting even!

We'll be going to the fair anyway. On my agenda:
1. eat corn dog (at least one)
2. see the butter sculpture
3. see border collies herd sheep
4. tractor pull (if I can get earplugs for Frankie)
5. consume much kettle corn, see if it's as good as mine
6. consume some kind of bbq'd beef product
7. consume a deep fried twinkie
8. pet many animals (Frankie will too)
9. etc.

The older man in Frankie's life has some updated pics, check 'em out.

Enough of the tales of pain and misery. The kid's happily off to daycare, the car is being repaired and we're feeling pretty good after a couple nights of sleep with minimal interruption.

Still waiting on the results of my recent interviews.

Positive vibes are appreciated and can be communicated via the comments section.