Costco trip count for December: 3
Saturday I had the task of hanging Christmas lights on our house for the first time. I'm not a big fan of ladders, or heights in general, to be honest. And my balance is often somewhere between acceptable and atrocious. But up I went anyway, with three 67-foot strings of multicolor LED lights from Costco. Staple staple climb, staple staple climb. So, LED lights still aren't quite there yet. The lights are a medium size, with a fairly thick plastic bulb. The four colors were blue, green, red, and yellow. Red and green seem ok, but the yellow is kind of weak, and the blue is pretty overpowering. Also, the blue lights look kind of purple from a distance. I think the thickness of the bulb wasn't helping the light output, as they're not as bright as they could be. Still, I'm attracted to the fact that they should last nearly forever, and the power consumption is relatively low.
Costco samples on Sunday afternoon were fantastic. Lots of dessert, cheese, meat, everything. They also started carrying egg nog puffs in the freezer section, which promptly made their way into my cart for a little more personal sampling.
Another interesting thing they had going was personalized Crown Royal bags. Someone from CR was there with a sewing machine putting whatever text you wanted on the bag. I think it could have been cool if I had a reason to spend $36 on a handle of alcohol I'll most likely not drink for a long time.
Costco trip count for November (final): 18
Costco trip rate for November: 1 trip per 1.67 days
Making a final trek to Costco for the month of November, I was in search of something warm to eat on an unseasonably cold day. The makeup of shoppers was interesting, as people were getting out their winter clothing that was completely unnecessary a day before. I saw one woman wearing a scarf. I'm sure she was ecstatic over the fact that she could even wear one and not suffer from an overheating of the neck, as the weather some years seems to preclude scarf-wearing entirely.
But onwards toward the food section. I wandered through the refrigerated aisles of prepared and/or pre-packaged food looking for some good soup. I walked past lobster bisque, then past the alaskan king crab corn chowder. As I was passing the Kirkland-brand butternut squash soup (new this year), another container caught my eye. A container of Costco-sized proportions, that screams out "you'll be eating this for days." The sticker indicated that it was a freshly-made food product. It was a great idea, I don't know why it hadn't been thought of earlier - rotisserie chicken noodle soup. It a 58oz container that resembles a "bucket" more than anything else. It seems that they simply took the chickens that hadn't sold that day, and turned them into soup. The bucket I purchased had been produced that very day. And home it went.
When I opened up the bucket at home, I think my first reaction to the aroma was "wow, that's chicken-noodly!" Scooping some into a bowl for microwaving, I noticed that the chicken pieces were rather large, almost too big even. The carrot and celery slices were much bigger than what you normally get in soup. For whatever reason though, noodles were noticeably absent from my bowl. Scraping the bottom of the container yielded about a half dozen noodles. Apparently they forgot that part of the "chicken noodle soup" equation.
Into the microwave it went, and several minutes later I had hot soupy...soup. The chicken was good, but again, almost too big to eat with a spoon. It still had that rotisserie chicken flavor, which is kind of odd when outside the context of eating big chunks of chicken off a plate, with a fork and knife. It was also quite peppery, which I didn't expect from a pre-made soup. Most soups aren't so bold as to assume that everyone likes that much pepper, though I enjoyed it. The lack of noodles definitely hurt.
If I had to give it some kind of rating, it would probably be in the 3.5/5 area. It was good enough to eat again, but the lack of noodles and unwieldy chicken pieces drops the score.
My Costco trip rate for November (the first month I've kept track) seems pretty good - I seem to go a little more often than every other day. :-D