Buy the Right Thing at the Right Time

Often, the right thing to buy is the more expensive one. Food, not so much, unless you need it for something special, like a fancy dinner or a hiking trip where every ounce of weight and every day it lasts is important. We go to the cheapest stores that carry what we need for our every-day meals. but when we buy things that are intended to last, we shop with something besides cost in mind. We've done the cheap route, and for some products, cheap lasts as long as the more expensive and does what it needs to do, but for many things, especially gadgets, cheap can be expensive. Cheap appliances have to replaced more frequently, cheap furniture doesn't stay looking nice for long, and cheap bookcases having sagging shelves shortly for anything but paperbacks. So we looked for quality, too, and if more expensive means better construction, we'll pay the difference.

On the other hand, we don't buy the better one when we have one that works. Chairs wear, but they wear slowly. Only when we see that over time a chair is beginning to wear out and it's not something that can be readily repaired (chairs can be re-apholstered if the stuffing beneath is still good, but sometimes it gets mushed beyond fluffing or decays, or springs give way and start poking through. Then it's time to start shopping, but not necessarily to buy immediately. Watch for stores that have regular or frequent sales. Study the options so that you're buying something you'll like for years, not just something that looks like what you have now or fits the current fad.

If you like brand names, look for brand names with a reputation of reliability and quality, not fashion, double for appliances and tools, which can look identical but are worlds apart in the quality of the metal and other materials and parts. For things that move, look for metal. If plastic is the only option, look for plastic that is strong, with sharper turns and steep angles. Gears and zippers that are rounded and shallow are more likely to become unusable quickly, because they are made that way when cheap, weak plastic is being used to make them.

Periodically, even long-lasting things begin to deteriorate or no longer served the purpose you need them for and expensive purchases will need to be made, but if the purchase is done with thought and care, it will be a long time before you need to do a second time.

I've put the follower button up top of the side bar hoping a few more of my readers will let me know they are out there. I've appreciated the occasionally comment (statistics show that no more than one in a hundred readers will post anything) but on my other blog (about writing, without the stories) I can also see stats, and that gives me a feeling for how well folks are enjoying my posts (or not). If there's a way to do that on this one, I haven't found it, yet, or don't understand what I'm seeing), so the follower button tells me a little, too. When I started, I thought it would be a pain to sign up, but it turned out to be fairly painless, and for me that's saying a lot.

I haven't posted a reminder about the stories, either, lately, so thought I should: I periodically clear out older story posts from the archive only because it's the opinion of some fellow writers that stories permanently posted online are less likely to sell to some publishers, even though the online version is always far different from the final published version and even though it actually helps build a fan base in practice. Still, I realize that some readers are coming in late and I'm willing to send the whole story to date if you'll drop me a line. On the other hand, I've found the feedback of those joining in late without the previous parts of the story to be very valuable: a good story will tell itself even in the absence of prior knowledge, like a sequel, and if things aren't making sense after a scene or less, the scene's probably need some work and clarifying.

More chapters to come!

Easter Egg mystery

Exploring the web is always something I lose patience with as heavy graphics slow things down and graphics are popular. Still, a quick look before I back up to a faster page can provide a lot of information. Today I looked for egg dying methods and opted for onions, but a quick scan showed me lots of options for that, too, including free floating onion skins, different kinds of onion skins, holding them onto the egg with rubberbands, coffee filters, old nylon knee highs, and cheese cloth or fabric (it will dye the fabric too but may not be colorfast). I also came across references to adding shapes and colors with flowers and parsley tyed on the same ways. I'll have to try the parsley sometime, especially.

I opted for free floating, not knowing my family's reaction to seeing nylons in the pot, the kind of onions we had in the house (though the skins are rather pale) and have achieved subtle marbling and pale but pretty ochre for a color, and a question about how eggs are handled before they reach my house. About half the eggs I dyed have two very neat stripes of white circling them at about the third and two-thirds points of the height if you stand the eggs on end. It's kind of the effect, in reverse, I might expect of rubber banding if one were very neat and didn't cross the two rubber bands, but what would cause it in the trip from hen to kitchen? And do I want to know? Anyway, it looks like I went to a little extra work to decorate the eggs, so I'm not complaining.

Green on Fiction Friday

"Looks can be deceiving," Hammer quoted.

"Sure, but they aren't always," Lynn countered. "Look at the man. He's short, thin, green. Green. What else but one of the Visitors?"

"Well that much is obvious."

"What then?"

"I meant like his age," Hammer argued with a dismissive wave for Lynn's question. "You never know with Visitors. Maybe he's a grandfather, maybe barely past puberty. He looks like a forty year old human, mostly. Small but not particularly ugly to us but maybe other Visitors think him hideous. Maybe that's why he's standing in the cosmetics section."

"He's standing in the cosmetics section because it's the one nearest the door."

"So appearances suggest, but he could be heading out, or making a second round of the store."

"And still damp?" Lynn asked.

"Okay, that one's hard to explain. And maybe the green clothes are a fashion statement, so he's handsome, vein, and looking for hair highlights. Or coloring. I don't recall too many with green hair. Not too popular among the Visitors maybe."

"Hair? Oh, yeah, that is hair. I didn't think they had any at all, green or otherwise." Lynn peered at the man between suits on the hanging rack they were supposed to be straightening.

"Oh, yeah, that's why I couldn't think of what other colors of hair they might have. Let's go see what he wants. He doesn't seem to be making much progress in his shopping."

They walked over. Hammer had made the suggestion but he hung back and let Lynn do the talking.

"May I help you, sir," Lynn said to the man, wondering if the green visitor spoke English.

"Hey, yeah, do any of these skin cleaners take off paint? The painters outside just knocked a bucket on me and it's drying fast."


Prompt: the phrase "Looks can be deceiving"

Check out other stories based on this prompt at:
http://writeanything.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/fiction-friday-challenge-202/