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Thursday, Jan. 30, 2003 - 8:31 p.m.

Big Lots��.

Lease and I went to the local Big Lots store tonight. We both love Big Lots.

If you don�t have one of these stores near you, you are missing out on the best "bargain hunt" of a store out there. It's like hitting a hugs rummage sale, only everything inside is brand new. And from all over the world, too.

This chain of stores sells what they call �close outs� from a bunch of national chains, and from major manufactures.

What does this mean?

They have all kinds of odd stuff you would never buy UNLESS you are in their store.

Canned Asian apple/pears from Mainland China? Check.

All-leather work gloves from a major company, whose name is removed because the left glove has a tiny stain on it? Check.

Starfruit flavored Gatorade? Check.

Starfruit flavor? I have only eaten a couple of these overpriced tropical fruits in my entire life. I imagine the targeted purchasers (jocks, mainly) wouldn�t know a starfruit if it hit them in the head.

I usually pick up my cheap garden seeds at Big Lots, but they didn�t have any out tonight.

But they did have a fiberglass-handled, four pronged potato spade. I broke my old one last spring, and I never got around to replacing it. Because of this, I ended up cutting far too many of my spuds while trying to extricate them from the soil. Using a regular garden shovel is not the way to do this job.

The fiberglass handle will last a lot longer than a wooden one, especially because I am lazy and tend to leave the spud fork, tines below the soil, in my garden all summer. No matter how much you rub the wooden handle down with oil, it will rot sooner or later. Fiberglass should last forever (theoretically, that is), and usually cost more than twice as much as a comparable wood handle.

The last wooden handled one I bought set me back about $20. That was , maybe 10 years ago.

The Big Lots price?

$7.99.

No, it�s not a name brand fork. Probably made in China. The metal tines don�t look hardened, so they will bend over time. I think most of the rocks are now out of my two gardens, so that shouldn�t be too much of a problem. If not, it didn't cost me much anyway, right?

We usually walk to the car with bags filled with mostly foodstuff. Tonight was no exception. The aforementioned apple/pears, several cans of yellow plum tomatoes and tomato paste (imported from Italy), bags of Mexican linguini (I didn�t know there was a big market for pasta in Mexico, but we have bought this brand before and enjoyed it), test-market boxes of new cereals and cake mixes, and a box of �mini-calizone style Hot Pockets� for the boy.

All together , we dropped $48 and change.

Not bad, for a scavenger hunt�..


One complaint- I try to never fall in love with any of the oddball food items.

Why?

Because, if you do, the odds are you will never see them in Big Lots or anywhere else ever again.

Such is the world of closeouts.

A few years ago, they had a bunch of salad dressing from a small company in New Jersey. I bought a bottle of the �House Italian�, and of their red wine vinaigrette. Both were great, but Codeman especially loved the House Italian. I went back to the store a couple of days later, and I bought all that they had. I think it might have been 12 bottles, marked at .67� each. These lasted us for another 6 months or so.

When the last bottle was opened, I told Codeman to check the Internet to see if he could find another source of the dressing. Nothing came up in his search. Since the only address on the bottle was for the city it came from, he wrote a short letter to them using only the company name and city as the mailing address.

His letter came back from the post office stamped � no such addressee�.

That was the end of the great Italian House dressing from New Jersey.

I tell you, it was just as tasty as the stuff they sell you for $4 a bottle at The Olive Garden ��


Oh yeah, one last thing:

You know how they always have racks of �impulse items� on both sides of the checkout isle. They are called �impulse� because they are things you didn�t plan on buying, or even knew you needed, before you noticed them while waiting on the slow checker.

Usually, you are looking at small bags of candy. Emory boards. A three pack of toothbrushes.

Stuff like that.

Tonight, I looked over to the display behind me. What was the entire display made up of, you ask?

Jumbo boxes of condoms. 24 per box, for those big weekends I guess. Some �lubricated for comfort�. Other �ribbed, for her pleasure�.

In checkout isle #1 at my local Big Lots. Boxes and boxes of them.

I guess that was handy for those people who, just as they push their carts to the revolving belt on the checkout counter, decide that they will have a jumbo amount of sex once they get home. Or, maybe once they get into their car in the parking lot.

I thought it was pretty funny. I�m just glad I don�t have to explain to a 6-year-old �daughter� what the pretty boxes contain���

Antique - Futuristic


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