Tag Archives: serendipity

Nuts.com

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My love affair with dates actually only started when I ordered as part of a tapas brunch one of the plates being “bacon-wrapped dates” which was wonderful when I tried it. This event was being held at a work function far away, one of our spring get-togethers for a database system I manage for Western. After we all returned from the event that exposure to dates stayed with me and I went looking for them locally. I found that Sams Club, of all places was selling the “Bard Valley” brand of Medjool Dates. I started buying the bins of them and enjoying the dates as snacks during my breaks at work. When I got them from Sams, they were listed as a “Seasonal Buy” which in my mind meant that Sams wasn’t going to permanently carry them, that they could sell out and not be restocked and I’d be left high-and-dry without any way to procure my favorite treat. I’ve written about this before, especially the prices for these treats in another older blog post, Sticker Shock. I knew that Sams would eventually stop carrying them and I’d have to find another vendor so I went online and found Nuts.com. They sell sample size bags, and then pound and multiple-pound bags of everything they have for sale and their prices are just as competitive as anywhere else except for Sams. While Nuts.com can’t compete for price with Sams, they can over quality. There is something about the dates from Nuts.com that make them far better than the ones from Bard Valley. They seem fresher, fuller somehow, better.

When I put these Medjool dates on my Amazon wishlist one of my beloved family members sent me a gift box of them from Nuts.com. Of course, Nuts.com has more than just dates – I can also highly recommend their Turkish Figs. The figs and dates are a great combination together. The dates have pits, so you must be careful eating them, you just can’t chomp away on a unpitted date unless you hate your teeth, but the figs are almost all edible, except sometimes for the stem which is a little too hard to chew sometimes. The prices are quite excellent at Nuts.com, but where everything gets in trouble with them is shipping and there is no way around it. I think if a bunch of people ganged up in one big order from Nuts.com you’d be able to defray the cost of shipping that way, otherwise it’s only meant for a treat when you can afford the cost of the produce plus the extra shipping charges.

If you have a sweet tooth and like Fig Newtons like I do, you can save yourself a lot of needless calories and enjoy a healthy wholesome snack by going to Nuts.com. Your local Sams, or even a health-food-store might carry Dates, but the prices will blow your head off.

Happy Damage

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Several years ago my stepfather came to visit and helped us gut and refit the main bathroom in my home. We replaced many of the fixtures including the tub, which was a cast-iron built-in affair that weighed 300+ pounds. After ripping it out, we replaced it with a better and much more well-insulated Vikrell tub. When we installed it I made a rather bad decision when it came to the tub drain. I selected a drain that had a cantilevered plug. If you pushed it down on one side where CLOSE was embossed the drain lid would plug the drain and you could take a bath. By pressing OPEN on the opposite side you would break the seal and the drain would pop open and the water would empty from the tub.

I do not like to take sit-in-a-puddle-of-water baths, I 100% prefer simple military-style showers: In, Wet, Wash, Rinse, Dry. No fuss, no muss, no dillydallying. Scott however depends on hot baths to help him sleep and help his asthma. This tub-plug has been a definite source of irritation as of late as it’s been getting more and more difficult to operate the drain assembly. Over time I started to see this fancy drain assembly as a problem and not as a convenience. Last night Scott took another bath, and when he exited he pushed the OPEN side of the drain lid and deep down the drain lids carriage snapped off. This morning I noticed the lid was at an odd angle and I decided to investigate before my after-workout-before-work shower and the entire lid and it’s support assembly came right up and out of the drain. The drain itself was not damaged so it leaks, but you can see where the carriage snapped off. Now I have a simple tub drain hole where the lid used to be.

My initial response and my reaction to discovering this was to thank my stars that this drain assembly failed. I’ve been quietly rooting for this exact thing to happen and now that it has I can replace the overwrought cantilevered-lid bullshit with a nice, old-fashioned rubber drain stopper. In this regard I see it as a kind of natural evolution, something stupid broke and made room for what should have been there all along, something from the past, something simple and convenient and RIGHT.

So tonight after work I will go to Lowes and look into buying a 19th and 20th century drain plug. It is going to make Scott’s baths and anyone else who would like to take a bath in our house so much happier. This event has also taught me that some things are unnecessary and some things have been over-designed so they beg failure. So something that Scott initially felt bad about was actually a cause for celebration!