Three interesting announcements today, one personal, one blog-related, and one retail (and none COVID-related other than the title 🙂), presented in opposite order to hopefully start with the more interesting ones:
- Artisan decor is coming to Fred Meyer! This decor package appears to have originated in the southeast somewhere (possibly in the Atlanta area, or at least that's where I first saw it) as a variation of the Urban Mix decor. For the moment, I've only found evidence of it coming to one store, but there have been quite a few other remodels posted recently with Marketplace decor plans or no decor plans shown at all, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of those end up getting Artisan as well.
- For the blog format, the temporary 4-per-day upload schedule is going to be a permanent thing, at least for the foreseeable future (or until my backlog starts dropping substantially, which I don't see happening anytime soon!) Like so many coronavirus-related things, this change is going to be around for a while now.
- To explain the random photo on this post, I got a new phone today! It's an iPhone 6S, which certainly isn't a particularly new phone (it was released in 2015 and discontinued in 2018), but it's still a big upgrade over the iPod Touch plus flip phone combo I've used since 2015. I didn't have any real intentions of getting a smartphone, but with my flip phone dying last week and my iPod Touch not doing so great, I decided to look around, and found that Tracfone was selling the 6s for $140, less than the $200 price for a new iPod Touch for something at least a little bit better. My parents came over tonight and we went to Tutta Bella (one of their real restaurants, which spawned the Kirkland QFC location) for dinner, and I decided to test out the camera -- I'm quite impressed compared to what my iPod Touch would have done in this situation! It was rather weird to see the restaurant this empty; like all other restaurants, they're required to do to go and delivery only for the foreseeable future.
I hope everyone else is having a good time in this weird period of history! With the new "shelter-in-place" order, I suppose I won't be able to test out my new camera on retail subjects for a little bit now, but that's just how it is these days. (Then again, if I have trouble getting stuff from my normal grocery store like I did this week, maybe I'll take that as an excuse to try out other stores... 🙂)
Congrats on the new phone! Looking forward to seeing the pictures you take with it (...at whatever point in the future that will happen :P ). Cool that Artisan will be coming your way, too! And ha, I've had the same idea about going to different grocery stores, but the ones I want to see most are across the state line, so even though we are technically allowed to go grocery shopping I think that would still constitute a violation of the safer at home order :P Not like being out in public is a major goal of mine right now anyway, though...
ReplyDelete(I haven't seen a loaf of bread in over a week!)
DeleteYeah, certainly weird times we're living in! Admittedly, even without the order, I probably wouldn't have gotten many pictures at this point since I'd rather show stores during normal operations (unless the weirdness is the point of the post, of course), plus the general health issues with being around people... but I am eager to try out my new camera! Of course, even once I do start getting pictures with it, it'll be a while until I start consistently posting these better pictures, since I already have over 3500 iPod Touch pictures in my backlog! 🙂
DeleteAlso, yikes, is bread one of the items that your area is running out of? That's been one of the few things that my Safeway has been able to keep consistently in stock (though admittedly with less variety than normal). It probably helps that Franz has a big bread plant right in the middle of Seattle...
Eh, I think I'd be fine either way, since the décor is mostly what I'm trying to get :P Smaller crowds would be a bonus, even! I feel you about the backlog though - I'm in the same situation. Although as you've seen, I keep posting new Pixel photos and pushing my old G2 ones even further back XD
DeleteYep, I went about ten days without seeing a single loaf! My parents managed to find some this week, though. Not much, but we'll take what we can get - the shelves were 100% cleared out!