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Have to laugh at this time of night when the Big Street Sweeper drives by, way down below in the street under my window. The 2 cats army crawl to the window and peek over the window sill in horror. Every night! It’s terrifying for a few seconds every time apparently. A big surprise, here it is again! What if THIS time, it drives straight up the building and tries to fit through the window for chrissakes kittycats?!
It's like a giant vacuum cleaner, the traditional enemy of cats.
It's like a giant vacuum cleaner, the traditional enemy of cats.
At one time I owned three Persians, one was smoke (nearly black), one was white with blue eyes, and one was white with heterochromia (one blue and one amber colored eye). Whenever I fired up the Nu-Nu, which was daily with those hairy beasts, The smoke colored one would bolt like her life depended on it, the other two would just look at her like, wtf is HER problem? and go about their business. The white one with blue eyes would actually try to ride the stick part of the vacuum that I was drawing across the floor like it was a surfboard or something. Apparently the blue eyes are a mutation that is accompanied by deafness, explaining their fearlessness in the face of the big bad vacuum daddy.
Ok, I know this is a non sequitur, but this is the place for it, right? So as a kid growing up in SoCal, on the dog days of summer, when the ice cream truck rolled around and we could shake mom down for some change before he drove away, there were only a few go-to selections for me. If I wanted creamy, I would get the strawberry shortcake ice cream on a stick. If I wanted a tangy creamy treat, push-up pop all the way. If I was craving a quick chill, I would get a bomb pop or a big stick. The big stick was pineapple cherry and would last a good 25-30 minutes to finish. The bomb pop was red white and blue, cherry, lemon, and blue raspberry, and the bottom (blue) part had deep grooves in it that I could stick my tongue between.
I recently bought a box of red white and blue bomb pops and was surprised/disappointed to find a popsicle that was barely thicker than a pencil. The bomb pop of my childhood was much bigger, thicker, and lasted a lot longer. I distinctly remember being able to lick between the grooves on the old school bomb pops. Has anyone been around long enough to remember what I'm talking about? Or am I just remembering wrong? A present-day sized bomb pop barely quenches half a palate. Or do I need to go to a different store to find the bomb pop of my childhood vs. these hotdog-sized disappointments?
Ok, I know this is a non sequitur, but this is the place for it, right? So as a kid growing up in SoCal, on the dog days of summer, when the ice cream truck rolled around and we could shake mom down for some change before he drove away, there were only a few go-to selections for me. If I wanted creamy, I would get the strawberry shortcake ice cream on a stick. If I wanted a tangy creamy treat, push-up pop all the way. If I was craving a quick chill, I would get a bomb pop or a big stick. The big stick was pineapple cherry and would last a good 25-30 minutes to finish. The bomb pop was red white and blue, cherry, lemon, and blue raspberry, and the bottom (blue) part had deep grooves in it that I could stick my tongue between.
I recently bought a box of red white and blue bomb pops and was surprised/disappointed to find a popsicle that was barely thicker than a pencil. The bomb pop of my childhood was much bigger, thicker, and lasted a lot longer. I distinctly remember being able to lick between the grooves on the old school bomb pops. Has anyone been around long enough to remember what I'm talking about? Or am I just remembering wrong? A present-day sized bomb pop barely quenches half a palate. Or do I need to go to a different store to find the bomb pop of my childhood vs. these hotdog-sized disappointments?
A lot of products have down-sized, and I believe that the bomb pop from the ice cream trucks was made by a different company than what you can find in most grocery stores these days, too.
Kraft mac & cheese used to have more product in the box than what's in there now, as well, for instance, a lot of companies just started doing that, while not really changing the packaging or the price.
Funny thing...my sons used to be wild about the ice cream truck like most kids are. But then I pointed out to them what the price for ONE treat from the truck was (they've raised it a lot since my childhood, it was like $2-3 for almost any of the ice cream or popsicle items) and then I took them to the grocery store and showed them that for about the cost of one, maybe two things from the ice cream truck, you could buy a whole box of whatever from the store. They both got angry and indignant and declared the ice cream truck to be a "big rip off" and stopped wanting stuff from it. This escalated, when my younger son had the idea that he wanted to fill a cooler with Otter Pops (or whatever brand you know them by, tubes of frozen Kool-Aid basically) and take that with him to the lakeside park they were often visiting that summer. He was like 7 or 8 years old then. I had heard that many towns want even lemonade stands to have some sort of a permit (?) so I actually called our small city, and inquired. I was willing to spend as much as like $40 or so, just to enable my kid to get his entrepreneurial feet wet, you know? Well I was told that the city had a non-competitive contract stating that ONLY the ice cream truck company could sell edible anything in any of the public parks in the city. That we would have to wait a year and a half until the contract was up, and "submit a bid request to the city" to compete with whatever bid the trucks were submitting, and if we got the contract, then...only my kid could sell edible whatever in the parks?... I mean what in the actual hell? She went on to explain that they couldn't simply allow such things because next thing you know, some kid is selling moldy sandwiches and making people sick.
I'm usually more left-leaning in my politics, I'll cop to that, but this was in western Washington, a town near Olympia, and their money-grubbing, nanny-state BS was infuriating to me. And trying to explain this crap to my kid? All he knew was that the ice cream man was now THE ENEMY.
The other thing that drove me bananas up there, was that if a relative wanted to watch kids that they weren't legal guardians of, the state actually expected them to get licensed (paying steep annual fees) as childcare providers. Same with any household in the neighborhood where kids went to play for an hour or two with friends until parents got home from work, even. Just letting your kid informally "hang out" in somebody else's home, a trusted neighbor or Grandma...NOPE! You could be fined pretty steeply for that. *sigh*...
Last month, at Walmart, i bought a box of 18- grape/cherry/orange Popsicle ice pops for $2.94. They were refreshing/tasty on those 90-100 degree days.....
I stayed in my Jeep with the A/C on. My Walmart shopper picked out all my groceries & loaded up my Jeep......This shopper service is the best idea since sliced bread.
Ok, I know this is a non sequitur, but this is the place for it, right? So as a kid growing up in SoCal, on the dog days of summer, when the ice cream truck rolled around and we could shake mom down for some change before he drove away, there were only a few go-to selections for me. If I wanted creamy, I would get the strawberry shortcake ice cream on a stick. If I wanted a tangy creamy treat, push-up pop all the way. If I was craving a quick chill, I would get a bomb pop or a big stick. The big stick was pineapple cherry and would last a good 25-30 minutes to finish. The bomb pop was red white and blue, cherry, lemon, and blue raspberry, and the bottom (blue) part had deep grooves in it that I could stick my tongue between.
I recently bought a box of red white and blue bomb pops and was surprised/disappointed to find a popsicle that was barely thicker than a pencil. The bomb pop of my childhood was much bigger, thicker, and lasted a lot longer. I distinctly remember being able to lick between the grooves on the old school bomb pops. Has anyone been around long enough to remember what I'm talking about? Or am I just remembering wrong? A present-day sized bomb pop barely quenches half a palate. Or do I need to go to a different store to find the bomb pop of my childhood vs. these hotdog-sized disappointments?
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No, you're right. Also, ice cream sandwiches. Half the size of the original ones. Popsicles, etc. I guess it's kind of good if you just want a little taste without having too much sugar, junk, etc. But I usually just have seconds. Or thirds...
No, you're right. Also, ice cream sandwiches. Half the size of the original ones. Popsicles, etc. I guess it's kind of good if you just want a little taste without having too much sugar, junk, etc. But I usually just have seconds. Or thirds...
I do this too but then I feel like a glutton. We've noticed that Magnum and Haagen Dazs ice cream bars are also shrinking. The minis are barely smaller than the 'full sized' bars.
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