I live. I’m also unfortunately not on vacation. I have been holding daily conferences with Squishy Dawg which results in lost time, and messing around with yet another install for something one day I may actually fully launch. So here are a few things running through the gray matter:
• Tomorrow night, under the cover of darkness, I leave on a covert mission
• Squishy Dawg likes to talk… alot
• Conference calls where the supposed “organizer” and 75% of the other participants don’t call in are huge wastes of time. I hugely waste 15 minutes everyday
• I have a meeting to go to tonight. Not thrilled
• The blogosphere is really, really, really big
So yeah… that’s about it. For more substantive content go visit Cereal Wednesday.
So Saturday night I made the trek into Jersey to take The Wolves to go see The Dark Knight. There had been some scheduling questions as to whether or not I would be able to go there and take them… but Friday afternoon I got confirmation from Pudding that they would indeed be home Saturday. So I set the time that I would be there for 5:00pm so we could go to dinner and then the 7:30pm movie. I then ordered the tickets online and went about my day.
So Saturday night when I got to the house… guess what? Yep… only the older two of the Wolves were there. The other two were with Pudding… at the beach. So needless to say… by the time they got home… dinner was out of the question. So I just piled The Wolves in to the car so we could go see the movie. Luckily, the concessions line was short… so after securing the tickets we got the popcorn, soda, two Kit-Kats, a box of Buncha-Crunch, and a box of Chocolate Covered Cookie Dough, we made our way to some pretty damn good seats.
I’m not going to get into how great the movie was, because no words I write here can do it justice. What I will say, is that walking out of that movie theater with the Wolves I was almost fooled into thinking things were the same as they were for the previous Batman movie… until my fingers ran across the extra unused ticket in my pocket.
That ticket reminded me that its going to be awhile before I see my favorite Batman again…
So welcome to another edition of the Sunday Smorgashboard! This is where I highlight the best from my corner of the blogosphere… so let’s get the Snacking on…
Lisa got some extremely shitty news this past week. Go give a hug… or something more if you can.
Metalmom is also on the rebound from a loss in the family. Go send her some huggin’ too.
It turns out that Yoshi was saved by his cat when he had a stroke. He’s in rehab right now (hopefully drinking pureed chocolate cake) and is on the quick road to recovery. Go send him some chocolate cake.
Poppy is on summer vacation.
Miss Britt is starving her kids (not really… but cubed uncooked eggplant leads to starvation… feed them beef!).
Dave still has $5 for entertainment.
While I usually don’t talk about EMS Blogs because I find most of them more boring than watching paint dry, RogueMedic did have an excellent post on how EMS is more than healthcare. Seeing as how this has been one of my longer standing arguments… it’s nice to see someone agree.
Tonight Turnbaby celebrates her one year anniversary on Turnbaby Talks! She’s going to have a special guest on at 8:00pm ET. Anyone want to take any guesses as to who its gonna be? I got my money on a Hermit Crab.
Finally…
Need a custom blog design that is killer? Rumor has it that Weblog Design Studio (the very place that this template is from) will be gearing back up and churning out the highest quality of custom themes for a more than affordable price. Start saving those pennies… because the designs are worth every one.
So there ya go… as you can see its been a pretty depressing week in my blogosphere this week. Luckily today I’ll be partying working hard at the Flushing Meadows Colombian festival. Hopefully I’ll take alot of pictures… the creme of which you’ll be able to check out at my newly upgraded and re-opened photoblog Through A Dog’s Eyes.
Have a good week!
As a reward for feeding me with my internal thirst for reading materials… I designed this simple button for those who may want to display their Snacked upon status proudly:
Additionally… because I am beyond benevolent and loving contrary to what some people believe… here is the code for you to use with a permalink directly to this post. So if your blog was snacked upon today, all you need to do is copy and past the code:
Smorgashboard Sunday is a weekly compilation of interesting posts, pictures, and videos that I have found within the 350+ feeds of personal or personal related blogs that I currently read. Due to the volume of blogs and the 10-12 posts I limit myself to comment on, there may be times when posts that you author do not appear. This is not to say that you did not have a good post, or an important post, or even a post I did not read because in all likelihood I did indeed read it. This simply means that for that week(s) that you are excluded… well… I thought other posts were better choices for the Snacking. This does not mean I don’t like you, I don’t love you, or that I don’t read you. It just means that for that week(s), I chose other posts but there is always the possibility of next week. Unless.
Unless you cry, whine, send me e-mail messages begging me to feature you, send e-cards with links to the posts you want linked, tell me how I don’t love you, tell me how I don’t like you, tell me how sad you are, tell me how I don’t read you even though you know I did because I commented that week, and/or try to muscle me with threats of large “goombas” paying a visit. If you do any of that… then hold your breathe until you see yourself on the Smorgashboard again. While your doing that… go get a white hat and get yourself some Smurfberry Pie ‘cause you’ll be blue before you see it.
categories: Smorgashboard Sunday
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So Starbucks Gossip has the full list of impending US Store Closures. You can download the full list here (right click, save as) to see what stores near you may be affected.
Personally, I found the New York store closings of extreme interest. Here’s how it basically breaks down:
New York City Closings
- •Store #14186 - 8414 Third Avenue, Bay Ridge
- •Store #2880 - 1675 Broadway, Mid-town Manhattan/ Times Square District (btwn. W. 52nd and W. 53rd Street)
- •Store #7515 - 400 Madison Avenue, Mid-town Manhattan (btwn. E. 47th and E. 48th Street)
- •Store #11538 - 1600 Broadway, Mid-town Manhattan/ Times Square District (btwn. W. 48th and W. 49th Street)
- •Store #11692 - 565 Fifth Avenue, Mid-town Manhattan (btwn. E. 46th and E. 47th Street)
- •Store #11737 - 340 Madison Avenue, Mid-town Manhattan (E. 44th Street and Madison Avenue)
- •Store #14091 - 151 W. 34th Street, Mid-town Manhattan (Macy’s Flagship Store on the 5th Floor)
- •Store #10165 - 242-02 61 Avenue, Douglaston (Douglaston Plaza)
- •Store #10166 - 89-89 Union Turnpike, Glendale (Super Stop and Shop Plaza)
- •Store #11812 - 80-00 Cooper Avenue, Glendale (Atlas Terminals)
- •Store #11280 - 1756 Forest Avenue, Staten Island
Brooklyn
Manhattan
Queens
Staten Island
Starbux Cannibals
It is pretty obvious that Starbux has no one to blame but themselves for this. They cannibalized themselves. This is evident by the first two stores listed in Manhattan. See the four digit store number? Yeah, that means they were opened awhile ago… before 2006. See how the other stores that are literally down the street or a few blocks away have five digit store numbers? Yeah, those stores were opened more recently, and undoubtedly cannibalized the customer base of the two older stores. Had they not been so damn greedy, it is quite possible those stores would have performed within expectations and those jobs could have been saved.
The closings in Queens I found remarkable for two reasons. The first is that all three of those stores are in shopping centers where there is pretty decent traffic. The second is that the two in Glendale also happen to have other Starbux stores in those centers. The 89-89 Union Turnpike store is faced with competition from a Starbux inside the Super Stop and Shop, and the 80-00 Cooper Avenue store faces competition from a Seattle’s Best that is located inside the Borders bookstore of that complex. I’m sure if I drove out to Douglaston, I’d find a similar situation of cannibalization going on. Surprisingly, none of the Forest Hills stores have been touched.
So How Honest Is Starbux?
One of the interesting phenomenons about this is that Starbux supposedly held this list back so they could notify all their “partners”. Funny thing, when I was recently in the Starbux at 80-00 Cooper Avenue last week, no one thought their store was closing. So I think I’m going back this weekend once I print this list out… to make sure that they have been properly informed that they better start looking for jobs elsewhere. I think Esparks Coffee is still hiring… and they actually call their large coffee a “large”. So if you hear about a Starbux being burned to the ground in Queens, New York… you’ll know where I’ve been and in all likelihood will be in jail for inciting a riot.
Send Dunkin’ Donuts.
Today I’m over at Karl‘s with a video that wouldn’t embed. So go over there and be sure to check the video out.
