09:14 – It was 64.5F (18C) when I took Colin out at about 0645 this morning, sunny and calm. Rain and thunderstorms are to move in late this morning.
A few weeks ago, Barbara met Frances and Al down in Elkin to walk around and visit the various retailers. One of those was Horton’s grocery. They had 2-liter Cokes on sale for $1 each, so Barbara picked up 16 of them for me. What surprised me was that they were packaged in heavy black plastic racks that held eight bottles each. She’d asked if she could have the racks to carry all the bottles and the Horton’s folks didn’t object. The racks don’t look disposable to me. I’d guess they probably cost a couple bucks each. So I figured we’d just hold onto them and use them to organize LTS food that we’d transferred to 2-liter Coke bottles.
Then, a couple days ago, we stopped at the Alleghany General Store, which is quarter mile up US21 from our house, on the way back from a trip into town. They had 2-liter Cokes for $0.89 each, again in the black plastic racks, so we bought two more racks’ worth. And again the guy just assumed we’d take the Cokes in the racks. He even helped us load them into Barbara’s car.
This is apparently a new thing with Coke bottlers/distributors, or at least with ours. So we’ll keep getting Coke in the racks. 2-liter bottles are great for repackaging LTS food like sugar, rice, pinto beans, and even macaroni. The one downside is that the loose bottles don’t stack very well, which these racks solve. With them, we won’t even need shelf space for 2-liter bottles. We can just stack them on the floor, several high. In fact, I think I’ll ask the guy at the Alleghany General Store if he normally discards them. If so, I’ll ask him to save them for us.
More work on science kits today. We have lots of labeled bottles to fill, and lots more bottles to get labeled. Fortunately, it’s pleasant out in the garage, where we normally fill bottles.