10:38 – It was 41.1F (5C) when I took Colin out at 0730, clear and calm. We got a later start than usual this morning. That was down to me, not Colin.
Only two more days until Barbara returns home. It seems like she’s been gone a month, literally. I found Colin yesterday sitting at my computer, trying to get me signed up at a singles site. He thinks Barbara is gone forever.
I haven’t seen any more of the raccoons, but I haven’t seen Animal Control at all. They were supposed to come out and set traps. I guess they figured it’d be easier just to let me shoot them.
I mentioned in comments last night that the free ride at Walmart is over. They still offer “free” two-day shipping, but they charge a lot more for the same item if you have it shipped versus picking it up at a store.
Here’s a good example. A gallon of their store-brand vegetable oil, which will cost you $3.68 if you pick it up in the store. They’ll instead ship it to you “for free”, but then the item costs you literally twice what it does in the store.
I looked at prices on literally dozens of items I’ve ordered from Walmart. Some they apparently hadn’t gotten around to changing yet, but most had the shipped price padded, in some cases by more than double.
One of the things they hadn’t gotten around to was changing prices on items in the Saved for Later portion of my shopping cart. This time of year, canning jars are always hard to find and expensive, particularly the name-brand ones. (Avoid store-brand canning jars like the plague; they’re mostly made in China instead of the US and are very inferior quality.) I had a bundle of two dozen quart wide-mouth Ball jars with lids and bands in my saved cart, so I went ahead and moved it to my main cart, expecting it to jump in price. It didn’t, and it said they had only three left in stock, so I crossed my fingers, updated the amount to 3, and clicked on Order. Once those arrive, they’ll boost our stock of new, unused quart wide-mouth canning jars from 72 to 144. That’s sufficient to can roughly 288 pounds of meat.
A couple weeks ago, while we were watching a Guildbrook Farms canning video, Barbara mentioned that she’d just as soon stay stocked up on Keystone canned meats rather than canning our own. I agree, except that I want to can some types of meat that aren’t available or are very difficult to find commercially canned. Things like dark-meat chicken, the sausage Barbara buys from Costco and Jimmy Dean, and so on.