LIFE'S LITTLE DISAPPOINTMENTS
I finished up my last post with a lot of talk about food, but I have to confess that over the years our favorite breakfast place has been our local SHONEY’S. I suspect that over the past fifteen years, we have breakfasted at SHONEY’S close to forty Saturdays a year . It is nice to go into a place where most of the servers recognize you, and our favorite server Linda (don’t have a clue about her last name.)meets you at the table with your beverages already poured and has your order in her mind already. Our kids, over the years have been fans of SHONEY’S breakfast buffet (When they were little, they were broken hearted when we discovered that the last SHONEY’S was on the east side of the Mississippi, and when we made a trip as they were in their teens and we found one on the west side, they were absolutely thrilled and cheered as they went in for breakfast. Strawberry pies from SHONEY’S have been the “birthday cake” of choice for many of our family for years. The biscuits and white gravy at SHONEY’S are the best in the south. The biscuits are “melt in your mouth” and the gravy is wonderful (once in a while supplemented by the sausage gravy.) Our kids have always gone to the buffet, but Janet and I were menu eaters, and the foot was always economical. For almost five years we had the Sunrise Special and two diet Cokes for 8.01 (pre-tip). The prices have gone up a little since then but were still the best breakfast for the money anywhere. One could sense that their business was falling off as they began to sell the breakfast bar for 4.95 on weekdays once or twice a month, and the evening crowd of cars really dwindled, but we were shocked to arrive home, looking forward to a quick comparison between the Big Bad Breakfast in Oxford and our traditional meal at SHONEYS, and we were terribly let down to find that our SHONEY’S had gone out of business. We talked about feeling a little guilty at not having stayed home in Statesboro for the Holidays and patronized them to the last minute.
A second disappointment came when we arrived home to a snookerfest. While we were up in South Carolina for Thanksgiving, we did a lot of Christmas Shopping in electronics. Several items were purchased (I believe at BEST BUY or Office Max, but I’m not sure) on “black Friday and featured really significant rebates. One of the things I bought was an updated edition of my preferred Photo program Photo Impact. I have used PI 6, PI 11 and now this was Photo Impact 13. PI has been through a couple of manufacturers but the results were very good. It is now made by Corel, and marketed by Nova Development. After the purchase, I very carefully filled out the rebate package and mailed in everything they gave me at the purchase (after making copies, of course) My wife bought some stuff from Logitech whose equipment has always been satisfactory and it too featured a rebate, thought not quite as large. There were a couple of other things with smaller rebates from others. We arrived home to find almost identical postcards from all identifying some miniscule item that had not been returned in the rebate package so the rebate couldn’t be sent. It was so obviously a fraud on all their parts since the cards were obviously pre-printed and, checking with a friend (from him I discovered that is was Office Max for PI 13.) his card was identical. They saved themselves some rebate bucks but I have my last version of Photo Impact no matter what number they put after it, I am through with both Nova Development and Corel and now, reluctantly with Logitech because I am convinced that the whole thing was a fraud. I couldn’t prove it, but I can avoid the merchants now forever. Btthhhhtht