Yup, it's snowing just a bit. Of course, the pavements are too warm for it to stick to them. (I don't give any exams today, so I'm spared the phone calls about "do we have school today?" "What do I do if I think it's too hazardous to come in to campus?" (And that one coming from a dorm-dweller...)
My furnace was throwing a code at me this morning; it wouldn't kick on. I groaned inwardly and contemplated calling the furnace guys, then I realized I hadn't changed the filter in a while. The old filter was pretty dust-encrusted, and when I changed it out and hit the reset button - everything was fine. (The last time I had a problem, the furnace guy commented that I'd be surprised by the number of people he got called out for "emergency calls" on who just hadn't changed their filters). Of course, now I have to buy more - my cold-air return takes an odd size (12" by 20") that no stores in town (as far as I know) sell any more. The last batch were mail ordered through Lowe's and I wasn't super pleased at the quality. (And I wasn't super pleased that the DHL guy left them sitting on my front porch in a rainstorm; several of the filters got damp and warped).
Hm. I wonder if Amazon sells furnace filters....
Edited to add: yes, yes they do. For a price - they're more expensive (twice the cost) of the crummier ones I had been using. But they're a brand name and are supposed to filter out pollen. AND they are eligible for Amazon Prime, which I have, which means I get 2-day delivery for free....
You know, I griped about the "wal-mart-ization" of Amazon when they started branching out into stuff other than books and dvds. But you know? It's not like wal-mart. Wal-mart has, by virtue of the size footprint of their stores, a limited amount of stuff they can carry. And often you find ONE brand of item (or a small number of sizes of furnace filters in this case). Sort of the majority-rules sort of thing: if only a few people buy it, it doesn't merit shelf space any more. But Amazon must have cavernous warehouses (and beyond that, many 'allied sellers' who work through them - though it's not clear to me if the allied sellers have their own warehouses or they use Amazon's space).
For people like me, who kinda-sorta live in the boonies, it's a really nice thing - 99.5% of the time, something I can't find locally, I can find on Amazon (or one of the other online sellers I frequent; Amazon is not so good for yarn but I have many other fine sources for that).
I guess it's kind of like the Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogs of yore - I know my mom, who grew up in a small town in a rural area of Michigan, talks about how they relied on the different catalogs for things, that her father even ordered books from one of the major merchandiser's catalogs. (You used to even be able to buy houses - well, kits for houses - from Sears).
4 comments:
*I* remember the kit houses. I think there are a couple of them still standing here in central Ohio. They are a bit of a local celebrity status.
:)
Phyllis
My husband and I have both sold through Amazon; he sold his own stocks of books, I handle fulfillment for a small press.
You can chose if you want to have 'fulfillment by Amazon,' where they store the merchandise and ship it, or the version where you ship your own. Fulfillment by Amazon (or FBA as non-sewing Amazon sellers call it) lets you do free super saver and Amazon Prime shipping, but means you're paid less.
There's a subdivision of the Sears kit houses in Carlinville, IL.
Increasingly, Amazon is becoming my go to place for everything. It took a while for me to get it into my head that they sell more than books and CDs. I mean I knew that they sell everything but for a long time I just never thought of them for other things. But now, more often than not, I immediately think, "Amazon will probably have that."
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