DECEMBER 9: ROSS REPRAZENT!!

A LINK wings its way to me from the Lesser Spotted Weston Hobbit — CNN has done a feature on Broome Farm, the cider mill Sarah and I went to in October. Fantastico!

DECEMBER 7: SPEND, SPEND, SPEND

OUR spare flatscreen monitor packed up Friday so it was off to Wal-Mart on Saturday morning to pick up another one. "Ooo," I thought, a 24-inch Acer for $168? That'll do nicely." But it wasn't $168, oh no. Chuck on 9.75% sales tax (thanks for that, fiscally-responsible Republican governor!) and a $16 recycling fee (!?) and the total comes to $202. Christ. And then today we finally got off our backsides and headed to a nearby Verizon store to get new phones. We decided against iPhones on the grounds that the contracts would cost another $90 each and AT&T's coverage is crap in our area and generally not that good elsewhere. So a Droid it is...

These phones are usually almost $500 each retail but as we were renewing our contracts we got them for $100 each and they chucked in another $100 worth of accessories. Good deal, yeah? Well... yes. But not so good when you consider that California has a law stating that any cellphones sold on discount are taxed at their retail value. So instead of paying $20 in sales tax we payed almost one hundred. The phone's great, I just wish we'd stop being shafted every time we have to buy something more than a pint of milk.