07:51 – Barbara and I were watching Inspector George Gently episodes last night. One of them starred a young Australian woman named Ebony Buckle, who performed two Celtic songs called Matty Groves and Silver Dagger. She has an extraordinary voice, classically trained, so I emailed her last night to ask if she has an album or MP3s available for purchase.
We’re doing the usual Saturday chores, and working on building kits.
08:45 – I just shipped a chemistry kit to fill an order that came in overnight. I always check to see the expected delivery date, so I can let the buyer know when to expect the kit to arrive. Here’s the information for this kit, shipped to the west coast.
The kits usually ship in Priority Mail Regional-Rate Box B, except those to zone 8 (the west coast). For those, the larger PM Large Flat-Rate Box costs $15.30, versus $16.13 for the smaller RRB B, which also has a lower weight limit. It makes no sense, but I’m used to that. But the really weird thing here is the delivery dates. I could have sent this kit by Express Mail for $39.95, and it would arrive Tuesday. Or I can send it Priority Mail for $25 less and it’ll arrive Monday. Geez.
12:10 – This “natural” products crap has always annoyed me, but it’s getting worse. Just try finding plain old vitamin C tablets. I don’t want “natural” vitamin C tablets with rose hips or who knows what else crap in them. I want 100% all-artificial, pure white, plain old vitamin C tablets. They used to be widely available and cheap, but I can’t find them now, at least a reasonable price. I used to buy them in bulk at Costco. They don’t carry them now. I used to buy them at Walgreens. They don’t carry them now.
I checked the Walgreens web site this morning, and thought they still carried them. Their generic vitamin C tablets looked ordinary. White bottle with no flowers or leaves or other “organic” crap. They had bottles of 400 for $6 or two for $9. Barbara needed something at Walgreens anyway, so we drove over. They had bottles in stock, but for $10 each with no discount for multiples. I bought one bottle, just because we’re out of 500 mg vitamin C tablets and I need to make up some more packets of them quickly. Oh, yeah. The small print on the label mentioned rose hips. Oh, well, It’s not that having rose hips or whatever in there is a problem. It doesn’t interfere with the experiments. It’s just gratuitous.
When we got home, I got back on the Walgreens website and ordered ten more bottles for $45 total with free shipping. I guess 4,000 tablets will hold me for a while, even though our run rate on kits is increasing fast.