My most hated store probably just became my favorite.

Ever since WalMart built a modern store here in Abbotsford and closed the old, converted Woolco; I have dreaded having to go near the store.  I go because I must, it would be unreasonable of me to spend more elsewhere for the same item I can get for a great price at Sam’s little store; but the Abbotsford store is the worst I have seen for line ups at the registers.  The number of registers open will vary, but it is always kept at the not-quite-enough level.  We tend to either do our shopping on Mondays or I will stop on the way home from work, just to avoid the crowds; but this did not make a difference at WalMart, you were guaranteed to spend at least 10 minutes in a queue.  I’ve been to old stores and modern ones, and stores in Canada, the US and Mexico; and none were as bad as our Abbotsford location.

As usual, we avoided going today; but when Karin could not find any suitable hair conditioner at Costco, she declared we would have to stop at WalMart.  Since were already doomed to the long line ups, we did grab some other items that we had been delaying until a WalMart run was forced on us, and then headed to the checkout lines at the front.  As we settled into the first line, I scanned to see what other lanes had the light on to see if even a quarter of them were open.  That’s when I spotted something new at the far end, and headed off with Karin in tow.  She protested as we went, figuring I was going to make this even longer than it needed to be.

Her mood suddenly changed when we arrived at what I had spotted; several rows of check out lanes had been removed and had been replaced with self-serve checkouts.  Now I realize that to an American reader, this might not be anything special; but I have not seen self-serve checkouts in Canada before (though Matthew tells me that they now have them at the Home Depot he works at, right next door to WalMart).

In just a couple of minutes I had scanned all of our items, dropped them into a bag, swiped my credit card, scrawled my name on the electronic signature pad, and we were out the door.  My source of hatred for this retail outlet has been relegated to the past.  Combining the lowest prices with the quickest exit possible will mean that I will now stop at WalMart before anywhere else.  I’ll also be looking forward to being able to make a quick stop on the way home from work, so that my weekends can be better spent.

I’ve been meaning to share this for about a week, but I lost the reference to it. If I saw this on your blog and didn’t give you credit, I apologize!

Ever wonder what the average family eats in different locations throughout the world? And what those average families spends on a week’s worth of groceries?

No?

Well, it’s a facinating project anyway. Check out Time Magazine’s photo essay showing What the World Eats.

I’m predicting that this will be the last Blogger post that I will also import over to my new blog. After that, I might make a post or two only on Blogger to alert anyone still subscribed to my original feed that they need to update feeds.

While my own blog still needs tweaking, Karin could not wait any longer. We therefore revealed our new site to the world a couple of days ago through a posting on her old Blogger site. People are already visiting my new blog either from her new blog or our front page, so I might as well announce it here too even if I still need to cleanup some items.

For those of you reading this through Blogger, our new site is PlayaParadise.com. I talk about the name choice on the main page of the site.

We have created sub-domains to host our blogs. Our blogs can be found at Self-Medicated and Amateur Geek.

Most (hopefully all) that are subscribed a feed of my blog should be subscribed through my FeedBurner feed. None of those people should have to do anything, I will change the feed over. For those of you that are unsure to which feed you are subscribed; if you continue to see new posts over the next few days, your all set.

Please just remember that I am still working on setting up the WordPress plugins I want to use and creating the pages, so you may find some broken links or funny looking parts. It should all be fixed up in a few days.

Still working on the new site. Karin is ready to reveal her new blog to the world; she is just waiting for me to finish writing something for the front page. Our car decided to get in the way, it broke down while I was out Saturday morning. My brother-in-law Rudy and I spent the afternoon trying to figure it out, and then I spent part of yesterday trying the last thing the Haynes manual said to try and then arranging towing. My mechanic found the problem in just a few minutes this morning; the timing belt broke. I had mentioned to Rudy that the Haynes manual didn’t seem as good as the ones I used 15 years ago, and this just seemed to reinforce it as the timing belt wasn’t even a mentioned possibility.

So I finally can work on the front page this morning, and hopefully we can reveal the URL in a few hours. My blog is installed and imported, I will just have to make the final tweaks after the reveal as I don’t think Karin can contain her excitement any longer.