Memorial Day was created to honor American men
and women who died in military service. The focus on those who died sets it
apart from Veterans’ Day, which honors all military veterans, living and dead
What are your plans for Memorial Day?
Activities
A poll conducted by the Indiana County
News showed that people had the following Memorial Day plans:
39 percent – grill outside and enjoy a
day off
20 percent –
go to the cemetery to put flowers on their family's graves.
13 percent –
participate in, or attend, a Memorial Day service.
12 percent –
have no plans; it's just another day.
9 percent – have
to work.
9 percent –
have other plans.
Travel
AAA Travel projects 34.8 million
Americans will journey 50 miles or more from home during the Memorial Day
holiday weekend, a 0.9 percent decrease from the 35.1 million people who
traveled last year.
The decline in holiday travel is mainly
due to a decline in air travel of 8 percent, concerns about rising costs among
travelers, and a waffling economy.
Safety
All terrain vehicles
During the Memorial Day, the number of people
riding all terrain vehicles increases, and so do accidents, injuries, and
deaths.
Reports analyzed by the U.S. Consumer Product
Safety Commission show that during the four days of the 2012 Memorial Day
weekend, there were at least 14 deaths and about 2,750 emergency room treated
injuries associated with ATV usage. That an average of four deaths and 700
injuries each day. Two of the 14 fatalities during that weekend involved
children under age 16.
ATVs continue to be the fourth most
deadly product the commission oversees, with more than 700 ATV-related deaths
per year.
Memorial Day starts the summer season
for many, and adults and kids will be heading out for swimming fun.
Last year, 90 children younger than 15
were reported to have drowned in swimming pools from Memorial Day to mid-summer, according to the commission.
An additional 106 children that age
required emergency response for near-drowning incidents.
The figures show that young children
and toddlers are especially vulnerable to drowning because 72 percent of the
children reported to have drowned from Memorial Day to mid-summer last year were
younger than 5 years old.
Click here for safety tips when kids
are in or around water.
Sales
Memorial
Day bargains are available for those who like to shop.
Before the big day, drive her wild with
anticipation by telling her that you have the most amazing surprise for her.
This promise will keep her guessing and make her think about your evening
2. Flowers
Know her favorite flowers. If you don’t,
don’t panic. You can find out by making a comment such as, “I’ve noticed plants
blooming early this year …” and steer the conversation from there. In a
beautiful vase, arrange an exotic bouquet and hide it somewhere in your home on
the special day. She’ll like that you created the presentation.
3. Chocolate
Go to your local chocolate shop and select
her favorite kinds of chocolate. Have it boxed and nicely wrapped to prevent
her from knowing what it is when you present the chocolates to her.
4. Dinner preparation
Create a dish and name it after her. For
example, if her name is Anne, you might call the dish “Tournedos Princess
Anne.” This step is the most important. Food that is named after a person is a
special honor. And women love it when their partners do the cooking. To be
organized, cut and precook the vegetables, and make the sauce beforehand. Leave
everything in the fridge. Then, on Valentine’s Day, set the table before you
start the cooking. On both plates, place a fresh red rose. The single rose is
just part of making her think that that is all the flowers she will be getting.
When she gets home, make sure to get her to promise you that she’ll stay out of
the kitchen so you can surprise her.
5. Dinner and gift giving
When everything is ready, plate the food,
cover it and take it to the dining table, and then ask her to come and sit.
Before you uncover the lid, have her close her eyes. Retrieve the hidden
bouquet, place the flowers on the table, and ask her to open her eyes. Tell her
what you’ve named the dish. After the
meal, take her by the hand, walk her to the living room, and sit her down.
Bring out the boxed chocolate, go on one knee and tell her, “This is for you,”
or, “You make me feel whole,” or, “You are the most beautiful woman in the
world, and I love you.”
Overkill? Not at all, Quansah says, adding it really
works.
Copyright 2013, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
Ads during Sunday’s Super Bowl cost an
average of $3.8 million for a 30-second spot, up from last year's $3.5 million.
The 2013 offerings, like last year, showed scantily clad women and people being
slapped and knocked down.
Adding to the violence of the ads and the
game of football itself were ads for movies, such as “Ironman 3,” and TV shows, such
as “How I Met Your Mother,” which showed hitting, punching, slapping, and
explosions.
At halftime, Beyoncé wore a skimpy costume,
as did the couple of dozen of women who performed with her. Then she writhed
around on the floor of the stage. The performance added to the sexist
atmosphere of the Super Bowl.
I did like one
ad: Dodge, in advertising its Ram
pickup, offered an ad about the importance of farmers, narrated by Paul Harvey.
Here are my awards for the worst ads airing
during this year’s Super Bowl:
Unnecessary violence:
Two guys in a library whisper,
then fight about what’s best in an Oreo cookie, the cookie or the cream.
The fight spreads throughout the entire library, and the police drive through
the wall to break up the fights.
In an ad for SABMiller Redd’s Apple Ale, a guy
can’t decide what to order, so an apple is thrown at him, knocking him down.
Then he knows he should order Redd’s Apple Ale.
In Audi’s
ad, a teen gets the keys to the Audi to drive to the prom. He marches in and
steals a kiss from the queen and gets punched by the king.
Silliest:
Budweiser’s ad, with the man who
trained a Clydesdale that later broke away from his team of horses during a
Chicago parade to hunt the man down, ranks as silly, in my opinion.
Also silly was Tide’s ad
featuring a salsa stain on a shirt that looked like a football player. Dozens of people came to look at the “miracle,” with the man’s wife
washing the shirt and saying “Go, Ravens.”
A man who loves Doritos
buys a goat who loves them, too. By the end of the ad after the goat has eaten
hundreds of packages of the chips, the guy’s hoarding them and making a
for-sale sign for the goat.
Stretchers, a tennis shoe, shows a man
outrunning a cheetah and tying him up, thus saving an antelope.
Most sexist:
Last year, Go Daddy.com showed two guys
in the “cloud” populated with scantily clad women. This year, it grossed out a
lot of people by showing a sexy model kissing a nerd with awful sloppy sounding
kissing.
In another Go Daddy.com ad, also sexist, wives around the world are harping to
their husbands for not putting their big idea online.
Fiat’s ad slowly panned over a woman lying on the
beach in a bikini was bad enough, but having a scorpion crawl over her? Yuck.
Then, when she sees the car, she stands up and throws off her bikini top. The
scorpion drags it away.
Motorola's cell phone ad features actress Megan Fox in
a bathtub. Two men slap each other and another falls off a ladder looking at
the phone.
A Doritos
ad shows a little girl bribing her dad to play her with a bag of chips. He
dresses up and puts on makeup, as do four of his friends.
Gliden, t-shirt maker, produced an ad showing a man
trying to sneak out after a one-night stand, which included fuzzy handcuffs,
only the woman is sleeping in his favorite t-shirt.
Century 21’s ads don’t show women in a good light either.
A woman is so taken with her new wealth that she doesn’t see that her husband is
choking, a woman in labor demands a new kitchen, and a mother-in-law is so
awful that a groom faints at the altar when he thinks about living with her.
Calvin
Klein’s ad showed a male model in
nothing but underwear for most of the ad. Objectifying men isn’t any better than
objectifying women.
Best Buy’s ad showed Amy Poehler asking dozens of
questions, and making suggestive comments to the sales associate.
In a Coke
ad, a bus full of chorus girls chases toward a giant bottle of Coke, with other
characters. One of the girls shoots a cannon full of something that sounds bad
but floats down lightly at the cowboys. And, a biker, gets thrown up on the
window of the bus.
Kia’s scantily clad women “robots” put this ad in
the sexist category. One of the robots kicked a man, earning it violent points,
too.
While SodaStream
made environmental points showing its machine that carbonates beverages, thus
avoiding using cans and bottles, it wasn’t necessary to have a woman in a
bikini operate the machine.
Most irritating:
Since there
isn’t any drama when you buy a car from Cars.com,
for the commercial, the sales representative gives the two consumers a wolf
cub, then the jealous wolf-mom walks in. Ha, ha.
In an ad for
milk, The Rock races out to the
street in his pajamas to pick up milk. He dodges bank robbers, angry lions, and
traffic jams and ignores a kitten stuck in a tree.
Ageist:
In the Taco Bell ad, a group of seniors leave
the retirement home for a night on the town. While some people thought their
partying was funny, I thought it made older people look ridiculous.
Racist:
In a Volkswagen ad, a white man’s car makes
him so happy he speaks with a Jamaican accent. When the ad was released early,
many people wondered if it was racist.
Dark and creepy:
Anheuser-Busch
announced its new beer, Budweiser Black Crown, with two ads that were dark and
creepy, featuring young, upscale people in dark clothing.
Bud Lite’s ads featured characters
trying to get luck through voodoo. One man carried his living room chair to the
voodoo master, Stevie Wonder.
In the Mercedes-Benz
ad, an actor is going to sell his soul in exchange for a new Mercedes CLA as
well as a rich lifestyle, which includes dating Kate Upton and dancing with
Usher. However, the actor sees on a billboard stating that the price starts
under $30,000, so he saves himself.
My best consumer experience: Hiring a worker to clean my
roof
Last May, I had a new standing seam metal roof installed. My
plan was to wash it from a ladder using a soft brush with an extending handle.
However, I got caught up in visiting my family and a project
in my yard got out of hand.
So, I decided to hire a worker to wash my roof. The warranty
requires an annual cleaning.
The worker came at 9 a.m. He was done about noon. I paid him
$300. He also cleaned the leaves out of my gutters.
I think I’ll hire someone every year to clean my roof. It
might be too difficult to clean it from a ladder.
My worst consumer experience: Finding maggots in my yard
waste bin
Last week, I made two mistakes.
First, after buying some salmon, I forgot to put it in the
refrigerator. A couple of days later, I couldn’t find it when I wanted to cook
it. There it was, in a bag, getting smelly.
Second, I took it out of the plastic wrapper and put it in
my yard waste bin. We can put food waste, including meat, in with our yard
waste.
What a huge mistake. I didn’t worry too much when it got
smellier, but a few days ago, I saw maggots on the edge of my yard waste bin.
What I should have done, according to the article “How to
Get Rid of Maggots,” was freeze the salmon until garbage day.
At first, I just wiped the maggots off the top of the bin.
However, they multiplied significantly. So I washed the inside of the lid with
vinegar. That killed them.
Maggots are fly larvae. When the waste disposal company
empties the yard waste bin with the decomposing salmon, the problem should
disappear.
I’ll wash the bin out well. If I have additional problems, I'll try killing the maggots with boiling water.
I read about some people who had maggots in their homes.
Yuck.
Copyright 2012, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
I read about the local wineries, and selected two. My friend
Cynthia went with me.
We started at Stottle Winery in Lacey. Stottle rhymes with
bottle.
Five tastes were $5. I liked the 2011 Rose of Sangiovese best. Then the server offered a
taste of a dessert wine, 2011 Lucille Late Harvest Viognier. It was really sweet,
and I could visualize enjoying it with a nice chocolate dessert. I bought that,
too.
Next, we went to the Medicine Creek Winery. The tasting
room, wine processing area, and barrel room are located in a remodeled barn.
The Medicine Creek Winery web site says, “Visiting the
award-wining tasting room is like stepping back in time to a 1800s vintage New
Orleans brothel.”
I liked the 2007 Cabernet Franc best.
I’m looking forward to enjoying the wines I got today with
friends.
My worst consumer experience: Being overcharged for wine at
a restaurant
After a meeting, I went with some friends to a restaurant to
have a drink.
When I went up to the bar to order a glass of wine, a friend
asked the waitress to put it on his bill.
After drinking the glass of wine, I went to get another one.
The waitress handed me a bill for $4.50. I added $1 for a tip, and signed the
credit card slip.
Today, when I looked at my credit card statement, I saw a
charge for $10.50 for the wine.
When I called about it, I was told the owner would call me
back about it. I hope I can get it straightened out. I don’t want to pay a
second time for a glass of wine my friend paid for.
Copyright 2012, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
Sometimes we run out of ideas for our dads because they seem harder to shop for than moms.
However, dealnews.com has been doing research on bargains for Father’s Day and offers the following suggestions for you:
Free yogurt
The Country's Best Yogurt will serve free yogurt for fathers on June 17. However, it’s a store-by-store offer. In years past, TCBY offered this free item nationally, but this year, you'll need to check with your local TCBY store to make sure it’s taking part in the promotion.
Take dad to a brunch or dinner at Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar on June 17, and he'll receive a free $25 gift card to use at a later date. The brunch will be served from 11:30 a.m. until 3 p.m., and reservations at this national chain are strongly advised.
Free sundae and eCard
Go to the Denny's website for a Father's Day two-fer: start by sending Dad one of the restaurant's free eCards, and then receive a coupon for a free Pancake Puppies sundae for dad and yourself.
Free magazine subscription
If your father like cars, consider signing him up for this deal: Mercury Magazines offers a Car and Driver Magazine 1-Year subscription for free, in exchange for information about you and your company. Only "qualified" individuals are eligible.
However, you’ll have to pay the $11 shipping fee, and if you don't cancel before the 30-day trial ends, your credit card will automatically be subscribed to a recurring quarterly subscription plan at the current rate every three months. The plan is currently $43 for three months. See the terms and conditions for more information.
iPad app
Visit the Apple Store, and you'll get the Father's Day iPad App by The Rosa Group. It comes with suggestions for the top gifts, things to do, and facts about Father's Day. It could help you find a great Father’s Day gift, and you can share the trivia with your dad.
Free samples
You might like some of these free samples, and they may give you an idea for what to give your dad.
About 880,000 ice/hot and ice gel packs are being recalled by California Innovations.
About 248,000 units associated with lunch boxes and 55,000 associated with food carriers were previously recalled in January 2012.
If the packs aredamaged, they can leak gel that could contain diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol, which can cause illness if ingested in large amounts.
The recalled products are Cryofreeze ice/hot packs and Arctic Zone ice packs. The packs are gel-filled plastic pouches with either transparent or opaque sealed wrappers. They’re used to keep food hot or cold. The gel packs were sold separately and with a variety of lunch boxes, coolers, and thermal carriers.
Six gel pack styles are being recalled:
Cryofreeze ice/hot packs in small and large styles. Both have opaque blue wrappers with the words "Cryofreeze," "Ice Pack/Hot Pack," "Non-toxic," and "Reusable" printed on the front:
The small gel pack is 6 inches wide and 5.5 inches high.
The large gel pack is 8.5 inches wide and 8 inches high.
Cryofreeze Transparent Cell ice/hot packs in three styles. Each has a transparent wrapper with the words "Cryofreeze," "Ice Pack/Hot Pack," "Non-toxic," and "Reusable" printed on the front:
One 3-cell pack has three connected rectangular-shaped pouches of blue gel and is 7.85 inches wide and 5.5 inches high.
Another 3-cell pack has three connected square-shaped pouches of blue gel and is 7.6 inches wide and 3 inches high.
The 2-cell pack has two connected square-shaped pouches of blue gel and is 5 inches wide and 3 inches high.
Arctic Zone ice pack is 6.25 inches wide and 4 inches high and has an opaque blue wrapper. The Arctic Zone logo and a picture of an iceberg appear on the front of the wrapper. The words "ICE," "Personal Ice Pack," and "Non-Toxic Leak Proof Gel" are also printed on the front of the wrapper.
Manufactured in China, the gel packs were sold at mass merchandise and warehouse stores, other retailers, distributors, and on-line sellers nationwide between July 2007 and December 2008 in items that retailed between $5 and $28.
Consumers should immediately stop using the gel packs and dispose of them according to federal, state, and/or local regulations, the company and commission advise. It’s recommended that consumers contact their local waste disposal authority for instructions.
Consumers can contact California Innovations to receive a $6 cash refund for large, 8.5-inch x 8-inch, Cryofreeze gel packs or a $5 cash refund for all other gel packs.
Which consumer happenings cheered you this week and which ones made you want to scream or weep?
Here are my best and worst consumer experiences this week:
My best: A sale on card stock at Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts
When I went to Portland to see my daughter who was visiting friends there, I accompanied her and her friend to the fabric store to look for quilting material.
When they headed to the fabric section, I thought I’d check out the card stock. I use it to make greeting cards to sell. Sometimes it’s on sale for 40 percent off.
I got lucky. The sale was on. I bought 225 cards for $30. A good price for white cards and envelopes and various pastel and bright colors, too.
I’m looking forward to making new cards for spring, as well as a series from my trip to Madrid.
My worst: A salad at Starbucks
Starbucks isn’t known for it’s good food, although its desserts are generally tasty. At Starbucks in Olympia, Seattle, Bellevue, Sacramento, Miami, Dallas, and Chicago, it’s all the same, in my experience. Low-quality sandwiches and salads.
When I was checking out the options at Heathrow Airport in London, Starbucks was one of the choices. Since it seemed more familiar than the other store available, I bought a Tuna and Three Bean Potato Salad.
It wasn’t a good decision. The salad wasn’t fresh. It wasn’t tasty.
It’s too bad that Starbucks can’t figure out how to serve its customers good sandwiches and salads to go along with its world-famous coffee. I’ve had occasions when I’ve been in a rush and getting something quickly at Starbucks seemed like a good solution.
This problem isn’t just in the Seattle area. It’s throughout the United States, in my experience, and London, too.
I’ll contact Starbucks about this and see what it has to say.
Copyright 2011, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
During the cold winter weather, I like curling up with a good book, drinking a hot cup of tea, or inviting friends to play Pictionary, Pinochle, or Rummy.
When it’s cold, dark, and maybe snowing, what do you like to do?
Best wishes surviving the winter weather. It was harsh here in the Pacific Northwest in November and the East Coast and California, too, have taken a beating.
Copyright 2010, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
Which consumer experiences cheered you recently and which ones made you want to scream or weep?
Here are my best and worst consumer experiences this week:
My best: Selling things on Craigslist
Craigslist worked well once I got the hang of it. At first, I thought you had to wait for the photos to appear after you uploaded them. I discovered that you needed to hit "Continue," then the photo would finish uploading.
I also found that reposting items on Friday brought interest on the weekend. People had more time to come to look at things or buy them.
The people inquiring and who came were interesting. One couldn’t come on the date she said. And, when she did show up, she was late. Another was very organized, bringing two helpers and a pickup for the table and chairs she wanted to buy.
I’ll certainly try Craigslist again. The tip to start two weeks in advance was helpful. It takes a while to find the right people for your items.
My worst: A doctor who wouldn’t help in an emergency
In the parking lot at 5:05 p.m., my granddaughter choked on one of those pieces of hard, red-and-white candy that she got at Spanish class.
She choked, vomited a little, and struggled to breathe. After drinking some water, she said her throat still hurt.
Wondering what to do, we went to a nearby doctor’s office. The receptionist said they were "all closed up" and couldn’t help us. She didn’t say the doctor wasn’t there, but implied that since it was 5:10 p.m., they couldn’t help in an emergency. So much for the Hippocratic Oath.
My daughter talked to her pediatrician’s nurse. The nurse said since my granddaughter was having pains in her chest, we should go to the Emergency Room.
Fortunately, a satellite ER for a local hospital was nearby. The doctor said if she could drink water she was fine.
I'm so happy the choking incident ended O.K. However, the doctor's office that wouldn't help a family in distress gets a "thumbs down" from me.
Copyright 2010, Rita R. Robison, Consumer Specialist
