Food Lion isn't dirty

Found this kind of interesting on a Dataline article I was reading on MSN....

From the supermarket chain that kept things cleanest, to
the one with the poorest performance in our survey, here’s Dateline’s
"Supermarkets Sweep." This is a list where nobody wants to be number one. (From
the fewest violations to the most):

10) Food Lion. The grocery chain
that did best in our survey? Food Lion. For every 10 inspections, it averaged 8
critical violations: that’s less than one violation per inspection.

9)
Wal-Mart and Save-a-Lot. Not far behind we had two chains tied for ninth place?
Wal-Mart and Save-a-lot. Over 10 inspections both averaged 9 critical
violations.

7) Costco and Sam's Club. Tied for seventh place, Costco and
Sam’s Club. Both averaged 12 critical violations — that means a little more than
one violation for each inspection.

5) Winn-Dixie. Next, as we go from
fewest violations to the most, at number five is Winn-Dixie. For every 10
inspections, the chain had 14 critical violations and the stores received most
of their citations for storing toxic chemicals such as cleaning supplies near
food.

4) Kroger. With even more problems, at number four, Kroger— they
an average 17 critical violations.

3) Publix, on average, had 22
critical violations. Dateline visited two stores in Florida and found flies
crawling over the fruits and vegetables. But according to inspectors, the most
frequent problem for the chain was the way it stored toxic chemicals.

2)
Albertsons. For every 10 inspections, 24 critical violations. And a lot were for
improperly stored toxic chemicals.

1) Safeway. Finally, in the spot no
store wants to be number one in Dateline’s “Supermarket Sweep?” Safeway.

Losts of mumbojumbo in that list, but finding Food Lion to be at the top surprised me. I shop there sometimes and never found mine to be dirty or clean.... just somewhere in between. And our Safeway here looks like Mister clean went on speed and decided to spring clean the store. I mean it's super clean.

It is spelled that way! And yes they are stuffed.

Brokeback mountain is spelled with 2 c's thank you very much (from my pervious post) ! ;) I noticed the past few days that my spelling and grammar have gone out the window. Today at work I received an e-mail from an employee responding to a question I wrote him. Since I receive and answer a few hundred e-mails a day for work I had to reread my e-mail to him to find out what he was talking about and jog my memory.

In that moment I saw the worst e-mail I could have possibly written. It had so many mistakes! I bet the person thinks I'm foreign. I was shocked the person made sense of it and responded without saying anything.

Also at work we have a new employee in our department coming soon. I'm no longer the only male :( I'll miss that. But I wonder how much of a guy this person is... he has a few boxes in his cube that he brought over before hand and my manager saw something fluffy coming out of them. She was curious and opened it up. Turns out they are full of stuffed animals. Looks like we have another fairy onboard , lol. He won't start work until February, but I know the stuffed animals have everyone curious what this guy could be like.

Opposites Attract

Now how many of you saw that title and thought of Paula Abdul? Well sometimes it doesn't all just work out like the song implies. I'll admit on this post you'll see my evil and picky side.

Let me give you a little back ground. Chuck hates movies. He tells me this often. His excuse is "I can't handle them because they are so long and drawn out"... and then usually adds "You alway watch those sappy/corny movies anyways". The last movie we went to see together was Munich which wasn't that long ago. But guess who's idea it was to see that movie? His. And guess what... that movie was over 3 hours! It wasn't sappy or corny though. So that was in his favor. But before Munich we haven't been to the movies in god knows how long.

Now I'm the opposite. I LOVE movies. I have a huge collection of them at home and would watch a lot more if I didn't compromise. Now that's the key word people... Compromise. I often throw on the History Channel and Discovery Channel just so Chuck can enjoy his TV. Now here is when things start bothering me....

Last night there wasn't much on at the time so Chuck puts on "Latter Days" on LOGO. It's a gay movie, and parts of it are extremely sappy/corny. Everytime I have a movie that I put on Chuck leaves the room without fail. So I decide hey, it's what he does best... so I leave the room. Inside I'm thinking, hey wait a second. Here he is watching a movie and it's a long one and sappy and corny. Maybe the excuse he is giving me is a bunch of bull. He does like sappy, hell he complains when I don't send him e-mails with songs in them.

Anyways I feel kinda pissed at this point. Because this brings up a sour note with us. I LOVE "Finding Nemo". When I bring up this movie or any Pixar movie to Chuck and say I want to see it he says "Finding Nemo is a kids movie, it's not for adults!". So he refuses to watch it. Several times I have wanted to watch it or Toy Story, and he just always says he'll never watch a film like that. Now to all of you guys out there who have seen this movie can state otherwise. In fact, I could probably find in a minute a 100 people (ADULTS) online that love this movie. Hell, it made critics top lists everywhere... and I know I can pull up most of those critics saying this movie isn't just for kids.

So back to the main story, I went to the bedroom and watched something different. He comes in later and I know he is a little upset that I left... Good! He does that to me every single time. Now he knows how it should feel some what. And why on earth can't he compromise with me on this? I mean I've been doing it for a long ass time now with him with his History and Discovery Channel things. He can't seem to give any movie a chance. He goes into it with a negative feeling, and almost refuses to let that feeling go. So even though he could have enjoyed a movie, he didn't because "It's a movie". "Or it's a kids movie".. etc. I have heard come out of his mouth "I will not enjoy Finding Nemo", HE HASN'T SEEN IT YET! How can you say something like that? Just because you may not like Bambi, doesn't mean every "kids" movie as he puts it will be one he won't like.

Anyways, I'm done venting... lets hope he'll open up his mind and compromise every now and then.

Brokebacck Mountain??

So how good is this movie? I have yet to see it, but everyday I hear more and more in the news about it. It's on DGA & SAG's list of top movies of the year, Roeper and Ebert top ten movies of the year, Writers' & Producers' guilds top 5 movie lists of the year, Seven golden globe nominations, talks of possible Oscar nominations... pratically on every critics list imaginable.

So is it that good? Is it a must see? We nearly went to see this last week, but instead picked Munich. I have to say Munich was an ok movie, tough at times to watch... and other times slowed down to a crawl. Even though I said it was ok, it's not one I would enjoy to see again. The timing (3 hour movie) for what you can sum up in about 5 minutes in plot kind of gets old after the first 2 hours.

LOGO - Open Bar

I was watching this show called Open Bar on the LOGO channel (the gay and lesbian channel on cable) and saw something that really touched me. This guy on there met up with an ex of his that he still really had feelings for. The ex wanted to go out partying and they went to a gay strip club. At the club the stripper started flirting with the ex BF first. And the ex was all up into it, totally making out with the stripper. When the stripper moved to the main character the guy just kinda ignored the stripper. The stripper asked "Are you shy?" and the guy responded "No, I'm being smart".

With that the stripper walked away. And for that moment I was like shit, there are decent guys out there. The guy even though it was an outting with an ex didn't feel the need to do that. He still had feelings for the ex and it showed that any guy in front of him didn't compare to the guy he was with. And also he was thinking about his well being and health as well. Of course he did make his ex feel pretty shitty because after saying a comment like that he made it look like his ex was being stupid. But that wasn't what was intended.

So, on another subject... I'm doing good. Had a past few good days with not much to worry about with work. Things are finually starting to return to normal and I can breathe again :) Now I feel the need to get in touch with all of those people I used to talk to and find out how they are all doing. Kevin, Dre, Rachel, Chris.... some of my dear friends whom I lost contact with due to the overload of the end of year crap we do at work. And get back on track with you guys as well.

Piano and other crap

Sup yo? ;) Here is that first piano piece I composed about a few months into my training with it in high school. It's simple and you can tell it's from a beginner although it is much more complicated then the average "Mary had a little lamb". I advanced way faster then anyone else in my class. While most of the students at the end of the term were working on "When the Saints go marching in", I was already doing the entire "Fur Elise" which to this day few people play all of it or even know there is more to it then just the first few bars.

Waves of time (part 1) by me (I revisited this piece in college when I was required to write a musical which I called "Waves of time" were I wrote approximately 40+ songs for my project for music theory). This was recorded on the new keyboard right before Christmas for my mom whom I made a CD full of me playing the piano of her.

On a more random note Chuck used a few of my hangers for his clothes and bought me new ones.... when I looked at them I had to look twice because on the label it says "Easy to clean!" Why on earth would they be so excited (yellow bolded lettering) for plastic hangers to be easy to clean is beyond me.

I had a good couple of holidays but I'm ready to get back into the daily swing of things. I hope you all had a good one as well. I'll write more very soon.