Mystery Building under Construction near Teeny Tiny Town

When we moved to this area almost 9 years ago, there was an old restaurant we use to frequent. Actually, the building was old, not the restaurant. This building had housed an Italian restaurant originally but sometime before we moved into the area it had closed and someone had opened a Chinese Buffet restaurant in that location.

Over a few years, that Chinese eating establishment had declined in quality and we had stopped dining there. I guess we weren't the only ones who had stopped frequenting this restaurant because it had closed up within a year after we stopped eating there.

Fast forward a few years to last year.
One day as I drove by this intersection, I noticed that the old building had been torn down.
Not only that, but the old bank building next door that sat on the corner of the intersection had also been demolished.
A few months later the lot was cleared and the city had begun forming concrete curbs and cut-outs on the perimeter of the lot.
Then, about 4 months ago, I saw that construction had begun on a mysterious commercial building. Here's a picture I snapped Friday of the building in progress.

Now back 2 months ago, when the only thing standing was the metal framework on this building-to-be, I told hubby that I KNEW what they were building, even though no "Future Site of XXX" signs had been erected.
It was going to be a WALGREENS!
And how did I know this??

Here's another picture I took of the building. Compare it to the photo below it of the completed WAGS building. I dare you to tell me I am wrong!lol

My Under Construction Wags....


A completed Wags.....
That telltale angled cut-off of the front 'corner' of the store design is a Dead Giveaway!!

Now I will have THREE Count' em Three WAGS in my area. This new one is on the southeastern end of Wilkes-Barre PA and the closest to my house. I won't have to venture over the river to the other side of downtown to go to Wags anymore once it opens.
Yippee!!

Sluggy-who is truly thrilled by the smallest things in life

FREE Olay Body Wash at PRICE CHOPPER

If you have a Price Chopper Grocery Store in your area(not the Midwest PC-the Northeast US PC), you can get the item pictured here for FREE!
Price Chopper currently has a 6.8 ounce size of OLAY Body Wash on special for $1.50(or 2 for $3, as it's worded in their current sales flyer). I found it on the shelf with the other body washes in the bar soap aisle at my local store. It doesn't appear to be an item they regularly carry, as there was no shelf tag for this size of Olay Body Wash. There was also no signage denoting that it was on special this week.

If you got the Sunday coupon insert for P&G a few weeks ago, there was a $2 off 1 Olay Body Wash or Shower Item Coupon. You can use that $2/1 coupon to get this Olay Body Wash for FREE. The coupon will automatically adjust down to the item price of $1.50....or at least it did at my store.

But hurry! The current sale ends Saturday and there is no way to know if this Olay item will continue at this $1.50 price past this sale period.

Sluggy

The Lettuce Fairy is Loose & A Walk Through My Garden

Yesterday I got to play LETTUCE FAIRY! With the unusually cool summer weather we have continued to have, most of my garden is still not at the harvesting stage.

Except for the lettuce and other salad greens.
Those are out of control.
Seriously!
Here's a photo I took of the salad greens about a month ago.



And here is a photo I took today.....it was MUCH WORSE than this yesterday, before I took the scissors and radically trimmed/cut back the plants.



So I picked my HUGE Pasta Colander to overflowing with greens.



I divided the bounty into 6 piles. Wrapped in a paper towel and put into a brown paper lunchbag. I had promised my favorite Post Office clerks Marie & Pete a bag each, as well as my Dr. and his Receptionist Jan some greens when I was in for my appointment on Wednesday. I had a Dentist appt. yesterday, so I took a bag in for both my Dentist and his Assistant Lorraine. Everyone very much appreciated the goodies.
I still have so much left!
I should make up more bags tomorrow morning and set up #2 son down at the corner of the road with a sign and Salad Greens so he can make some money.

So I remembered to take some pictures when I was poking around in the garden beds this morning. Though everything is behind in maturing this summer, things are ripening.
Here is the 1st summer squash....



The green pepper plants are small this year but are starting to produce....



The tomato plants seem to be catching up but slow to fruit. Here is the 1st baby tomato....look closely, it's behind the metal support pole in the center of the photo.



I finally found a cucumber too! Actually, the joke's on me because after I snapped this photo I noticed another LARGER CUKE in the upper left side of the photo I took.lol The sun glare was awful this morning so I'm shocked I even took decent pictures.



I am a haphazard 'weeder'. I do weed the obvious grass intruders but sometimes if some 'weed' appears that looks interesting I let it grow, just to see what develops.
That was a good thing last year, when I let a couple 'weeds' grow and ended up with a huge Sunflower! I've never been able to grow one here on purpose but one stray seed dropped here by some bird gave me a beautiful surprise.
This year I had some interesting 'weeds' take hold in the same spot as my Sunflower last year. These 'weeds' have spread a little too much and I went to pull and cut them back this morning. I found a big lovely Swiss Chard underneath! It's in the center of the photo....


Here is another Swiss Chard(red stalks)that finally grew. I never though this plant would get big enough to produce. This is my 1st year growing Chard. The chipmunks that rule my yard LOVED these chard seeds. We replanted it many, MANY times!lol



And just to prove that I am NOT the world's best gardener, here are my purple bush beans. For some reason, beans have NOT been good this year! So my yard is not straight out of the play, OUR TOWN. (If you are familar with this piece of literature, & you got my play on the line from the play, you may groan now.lolol)
I planted both bush type and pole variety beans. These piddly little puny bush bean plants are all that came up. The pole beans are MIA.




So that's a walk around my yard for today. I'm off to go fix some lunch without a STOVE!gggrrrrr and then to go through leftovers from the Yard Sale of last weekend.

Sluggy

Getting Satisfaction from a Large Corporation

If you need background on this post, please check THIS ONE out first.

Does anybody have any musical talent?
Maybe I should take my complaint about FRIGIDAIRE RANGES to YouTube with a creative rant against this company for producing DEFECTIVE, SHODDY APPLIANCES!

Hey, it worked for Dave Carroll recently when United Airlines broke his $4Thousand Guitar......check out THIS.

Sluggy

NEVER BUY a Fridgidaire Appliance! They are Dangerous to your Health

DO NOT BUY THIS FRIGIDAIRE RANGE! It may look sleek and competent but it could be a potential killer.


Let me first say that something is terribly WRONG in this country, when you plunk down a big wad of hard earned cash for an electrical appliance and said electrical appliance has some kind of 'incident' happen with it, that renders it unusable in a short amount of time.

Here's my story....that I intend to relay to the parent company of FRIGIDAIRE very shortly. You, my lucky readers, get to hear about it first!lol

Husband & I purchased a brand spanking new FRIGIDAIRE 30" ELECTRIC RANGE-Model #FEFL79DCD from LOWE'S. The year was 2005. I'd have to go dig out the receipt(yes, I keep everything!lol)for the exact amount spent for it but I can say it was in the ballpark of $800+ dollars(Not including the new Power Cord cost, that Lowe's insists you buy, if you have their staff connect the appliance for you in your home).
It was the most we have ever spent on a range. It had some cool features(self-cleaning, expandable burner size, center warming zone, timers, etc.) and it was stainless and black which looked so sleek. I was in love.

But that love affair didn't last.
It might help to mention that this baby came with a 1 year warranty. Lowe's tried to get us to purchase an EXTENDED WARRANTY on this range, which would have bought us another 2 years of coverage. My thinking is that if Mr. & Mrs. John Q Public spend $800+ on something, they should EXPECT IT TOO WORK PROPERLY for more than 1 YEAR!
It is a SAD SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS when businesses in this country sell you shoddy goods for large sums of money. Why can't they just make them BETTER to begin with and just charge what that costs? When I buy a kitchen appliance I expect it to live AT LEAST 10 years!

Back to my sad love affair.
I noticed a couple of bad things during that 1st year we owned this Frigidaire Range.
The first one was aesthetic in nature.
The supposed stainless steel, STAINED. I kept the front stainless steel panel of the range pretty clean, wiping it down regulary to keep the fingerprints from kids and nose prints from dogs from showing. I started noticing what appeared to be RUST SPOTS on the metal front, below the glass oven window. Over time, these areas grew and now are quite noticeable.
I looked at this as a regular part of the aging process for a range. George Clooney got some distinguishing grey hairs as he matured, so my Stainless Steel Range acquired some rusty spots. But it was still hot, just like George.

Speaking of hot.....I noticed one day, about 2 years into owning this FRIGIDAIRE RANGE, that when I turned the heat DOWN on the burner I was cooking on, the stove didn't lower the heat level on the burner. I believe I was heating up some spaghetti sauce at the time. I set the burner on HIGH. After the sauce began to break a boil on the surface, I turned down the burner to MEDIUM(6 on the dial). After about 3 minutes, the burner coil was still glowing red(under the glass cooktop) and the sauce was now boiling furiously. I had to remove the pot of sauce, turn off the burner completely and continue cooking on a different burner.
After I noticed this flaw in the range, I saw that it would happen intermittenly on a regular basis at times with all the burners. This was an inconvenience but didn't render the range unusable.

Then Monday night of this week, I had a small saute pan of pork barbeque on the front right burner, reheating the meat for dinner. The burner was set on a medium heat level. As I stirred the pork, I heard a loud POP! I thought, "What the ???" and looked down at the range. I lifted the pan and saw that the GLASS COOKTOP had just CRACKED!!! The crack ran from near the center of the burner I was using & extended 6 inches or so over toward the center of the cooktop.
I hadn't dropped anything on the glass, EVER in the 4 years we have owned it. It had no weak spot from a chip or from dropping something on the cooktop in the past that would cause it to just spontaneously crack like that. The burner under where it cracked was only turned to Medium Heat and wasn't malfunctioning at the time and hotter than it should have been.

By the next morning, the crack had worked it's way over the entire glass top, like a spider's web.
FOUR YEARS YOUNG and this FRIGIDAIRE RANGE was unusable! $800+ for 4 yrs. of service is INEXCUSEABLE! That's like paying $200 a Year for the joy of being able to cook. And even if I had bought an Extended Warranty, a repair at 4 yrs. from purchase would NOT have been covered. I'm glad at least that I hadn't thrown away another $100 on a useless warranty.

Being a Compact-er, my first thought, despite it's other flaws, was to repair this range. Why send a range with what could see many more years of service to a landfill. Despite the enormous inconvenience being without a range/oven for a month or more would cause my family, we could work around this for the good of old Mother Earth.

After calling around, I find out that yes, I can get another glass cooktop BUT.....
it will have to be specially ordered.
Meaning it will be a minimum of FOUR WEEKS before it will arrive. (I've found that when dealing with a construction or a repair situation, it's best to DOUBLE the amount of you are told it will take to complete.)
After the glass arrives, you then get to wait for the repair professional to find the time to install said glass on your appliance.

So what's the bottom line on this repair?
With installation, approx. $350. (The glass alone would cost $250 + tax.)
I'm expected to shell out almost HALF what this appliance cost me to begin with to get it working again!! I've only had it 4 YEARS!
So with this repair, I'll have almost $1200 INVESTED into this Range.

Then in my search online for information about this appliance/company/repair/etc. I happened upon a review from another owner. It seems one morning, for no apparent reason their FRIGIDAIRE RANGE's glass window in the door exploded! It was NOT being used at the time and hadn't been since at least the night before when it just spontaneously burst, sending shards of glass shooting across their kitchen. After contacting the parent company of FRIGIDAIRE, ELECTROLUX, they never received any answers or satisfactory response to this incident.

As #2 son might say, Bigtime FAIL Electrolux.....

So on third and fourth thought, I am NOT going to repair this obviously defective product from an Obviously Defective Company with EVEN MORE Obviously Defective Business Practices. I don't even feel right giving this thing away to someone who wants to take the time & expense to repair it either! Who knows what may befall them in the course of using/having this FRIGIDAIRE RANGE. I would hate to be sued in years to come in civil court by someone who takes glass shrapnel to the groin when the oven glass in the door explodes while they are cooking pancakes some morning.

One thing I have decided is that I will be going back to a good old exposed coiled burners model. No more fancy pants glass cooktops for me! Those things are cash cows for the appliance parts department. Hundreds of $$s for a slab of glass. A fragile material that begs to be broken in a room with alot of hoisting around of equipment and dishware in it, not to mention the odd canned good being dropped on it at just the right angle to make it shatter. The old fashioned burners may not be something out of Better Homes & Gardens but it's one LESS THING that can break!

Does anyone have any experiences with other brands' models of range to share with me, while I research my options? Non-exploding models only please.....

Sluggy