spugbrap’s blog

Well, I lived up to the promise I made when I posted about the 7-Eleven + The Simpsons Kwik-E-Mart promotion — I visited the Kwik-E-Mart in Bladensburg, MD on 7/27/2007.

I almost didn’t get around to it, but I really wanted to go! Earlier in the month, I even tried to get my team, at work, to go as a combination weekly status meeting / team building exercise. But, I wasn’t able to get everyone on board with the plan. The main drawback was that it was over an hour away, under normal traffic conditions.

It was getting towards the end of the month, so Lacey and I drove up there with our 3 kids (Matthew, Skylar, Nikki), our friend Jena, and her son Xander. We didn’t even think about the fact that it happened to be opening day for The Simpsons Movie, until we were about half-way there. We were wondering if there would be anything special happening at the Kwik-E-Mart that day. As it turned out, there was…

When we got there, we took a bunch of pictures outside, then went in and took pictures of everything Simpsons-related that we saw. It was fun taking pictures of some of us standing next to the life-size Simpsons characters. There were lots of other people there, doing the exact same thing, too. It’s a good thing they had extra staff working during the Kwik-E-Mart promotion, because it enabled them to handle the high volume of customers pretty smoothly. We bought a few Squishees, half a dozen pink sprinkly donuts, and a bunch of hot dogs for lunch.

While we were taking pictures of everything, we ran across a man holding a large video camera, who was recording all kinds of things. We talked to him, at one point, and found out that he was recording video for Fox 5 News! He recorded us in several places, including Matthew and Xander getting their Squishees, Skylar and Nikki looking cute (I don’t remember exactly what they were doing), and me getting my 6 donuts out of the display case.

When we got home, I programmed the Tivo to record the 10 o’clock news, and the 11 o’clock news on Fox Channel 5. We actually watched the 10 o’clock news in realtime, hoping to see ourselves on TV. At around 10:55pm, they finally did a Simpsons segment, which was about 5 minutes long. We didn’t quite get the face time that I’d kinda hoped for, considering how much he actually recorded of us, but I know they had to condense their footage to fit within the 5 minute segment.

In any case, it was fun for us to see ourselves on the news on TV! I was looking into ways to get the video clip from my Tivo to my computer, but ended up finding it posted on the Fox 5 DC website. Woohoo! To watch it, yourself, see the links below.

Pictures:
Pictures from our trip to the Kwik-E-Mart

Video:

There are two ways to watch the Fox 5 News coverage of the Simpsons Movie opening/Kwik-E-Mart promo (in which we made brief appearances):

1. Download the 10MB .flv file to your computer (to view with your favorite media player application, if you’ve got the right codecs)

OR

2. View it in your web browser (from its original location, on myfoxdc.com)

If you look carefully, and especially if you pause at just the right moment, you can see all of us in this video clip. I have yet to find an easy way to extract just those frames from the .flv file, but hopefully I will get that done at some point.

Anyways, my hands getting donuts out of the display case, and my bright green shirt, can be seen at around 1:20 into the video (NOTE: if you’re watching it on the myfoxdc website, start timing *after* the horrible local advertisement).

From 1:27-1:31, you can see me, all 3 of my kids, Lacey, Jena, and Xander; we’re in the background, behind the kid who’s talking.

We recently had a new Harris Teeter grocery store open near us, and they sent us an invitation to a special promotional event. The promo was nothing to get excited about. It was something along the lines of, “Take 10-15% off of 6 bottles of wine, on June 26 between 12-6pm!”

This was a really lame promo for several reasons:

1. Most grocery stores around here already give you a 10% discount when you buy 6 bottles of wine in one visit.
2. The prices of wine are generally marked up so much at grocery stores, that a 10-15% discount only brings the price down to a normal sale price.
3. The time window to get the discount was extraordinarily small (6 hours!).
4. The quantity required to get the discount was too large (6 bottles).

The promo excludes what I assume to be the majority of households. Not everybody drinks. But, among those that do, not everybody drinks wine. But, among those who do, not everybody would want to hurry in to buy 6 bottles! I would think that a very small percentage of households would actually care about this type of promo.

The only good thing about this promo was the name: “Taste of Teeter”. You just can’t beat that!

From an article on msn tv news (and every other AP affiliate):

Over the weekend, 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of “The Simpsons” fame, in the latest example of marketers making life imitate art.

Those stores and most of the 6,000-plus other 7-Elevens in North America will sell items that until now existed only on television: Buzz Cola, KrustyO’s cereal and Squishees, the slushy drink knockoff of Slurpees.
…

What an awesome promotion! I just wish more stores were getting the temporary face lifts. But I vow to attempt to visit the closest one (in Bladensburg, MD) sometime this month. To see tons of pictures of the real-life Kwik-E-Marts, check out the Simpsons Movie Kwik-E-Mart Mirror.

There’s also a sweepstakes going on, with the grand prize winner getting to be animated in an upcoming Simpsons episode.

Lacey and I went to Kohl’s in Manassas, VA tonight to buy me some t-shirts. Most of my t-shirts have either shrunk too much, from too much dryer heat over time, or they’re black (and it’s too hot out these days to be wearing black t-shirts). They had a lot of funny t-shirts to choose from, so we spent quite a while looking at them.

After we picked out some shirts, we headed over to look at towels. We’ve recently been spoiled by some very soft bamboo/cotton-blend towels, and wanted to get some more soft towels.

As we walked across the store, we noticed a pungent, sulfuric odor. At first, I thought it might have just been some cheap perfume (since we were approaching the perfume section). Lacey thought a nearby kid had a poopy diaper. Then, we noticed that water was shooting out from the ceiling about 30 feet away from us!

It’s hard to convey just how amazing this was to witness, but it was basically like an upside-down fire hydrant, only with more pressure. That’s how big around it was, though, and the force was tremendous. Someone said it was hot water, and it looked like there was steam in the air near it, but it may have just been mist from the force of the spray.

Lacey shoved me towards the checkout and said “let’s buy our shirts, and get out of here now!” She assumed that they would be shutting down the store soon, and we might not be able to check out if we waited any longer. We’d just spent 30 minutes picking out 4 shirts, and we wanted to buy them! Towels could wait.

Sure enough, as we were about to check out, an announcement came over the PA system. They said that the fire department was on their way, and the store would be shutting down. The cashier checked us out quickly, and said something like, “Well, at least I won’t have to fold all those shirts!”

On the way out, I snapped a couple pictures with my phone. They didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped, but I went ahead and circled the water spray in red, and outlined the water that I could see on the floor (on the way out) in blue. Click the thumbnails below to view the full-size photos.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, a fire engine was approaching. Hopefully the firefighters were able to turn the water off quickly, but in any case, that Kohl’s is probably going to be closed for a while. I know from experience, just how much of a hassle it is to clean up after a flood. But

Speaking of my experience with flooding… Apparently, flooding happens wherever I go. I must have some kind of super power that I don’t yet know how to control. My apartment in Blacksburg flooded 3 times. My house in Herndon flooded 3 times. My house in Bristow flooded 3 times (and I’ve blogged about 2 of them. just noticed that I never posted about the most recent one. I’ll have to do that soon. Here’s what I did post, though: one, two, three, four).

It seems that even the stores I shop at are not even safe, anymore! Hopefully this pattern will not continue, or Kohl’s might be due for 2 more floods later this year. Might want to think twice before inviting me over to your house. :(

* Edited 07/02/2007 12:00pm EST - found another picture, I knew I took 3. This one is just of the water in the aisle. Yuck!

This morning, I didn’t have enough bread to make my usual breakfast: a peanut peanut butter and jelly sandwich made with toast. Plus, I was extraordinarily sleepy.

So, I decided to stop at Caribou on the way to work, to get a mocha latte and a chocolate caramel muffin.

I decided to take a Vivarin instead, and wait until I was closer to work to get food; specifically, at the drive-thru Dunkin Donuts in Manassas Park. As I pulled into the drive-thru, I realized that I can’t buy donuts that way. I wanted two donuts, but I needed to check what kinds they had, and what looked good to me today, which is something I could not do from the drive-thru.

So, I parked and went into the restaurant. After picking out a drink that looked and sounded interesting, and waiting in line for a few minutes, I ordered two donuts. With the drink, the total came to $3.something, so I handed the cashier my check card. She handed it back, and said that they do not accept credit cards.

This boggled my mind, since this is 2006, and even temporary Fireworks stands, off-brand gas stations, and parking garages accept credit cards. I used to always look for the VISA/MC symbols in a store’s door/window, or ask before ordering something, if I wasn’t sure. But the thought never even crossed my mind, since it’s so rare to encounter a place that does not accept credit cards.

Well, I only had $1 in my wallet, and was not about to try to decide which ONE donut to buy. So I walked out, and continued down the road to the Giant Food grocery store. I thought that might actually turn out to be a good thing, since I could get Krispy Kreme donuts from the bakery section, there. I was bummed to find out that this particular Giant bakes their own donuts. I could have bought a pre-packaged box of Krispy Kreme donuts, but I really only wanted to get two donuts, not 6 or 12, so I went ahead and bought two Giant bakery donuts.

The donuts were too sweet, and not as tasty as Krispy Kreme would have been, so I feel like all of that time and effort was kind of wasted. I think Dunkin Donuts would have satisfied me as well, but unfortunately they are still living in the Stone Age or something.

A few minutes ago, I realized that this is not the first time I’ve been disappointed by Dunkin Donuts. A year or so ago, I stopped at the one in Herndon, and even had my kids all psyched up about getting some donnuts. No credit cards. I do not carry cash much, at all, because I prefer to use credit/check cards to keep track of where money goes. So I had to find a different place to get donuts that day as well.

So, I am hereby doing a “lazy boycott” of Dunkin Donuts. Lazy, because I very rarely go out with the intention of buying donuts, and rarely carry [much/any] cash, so I will avoid buying Dunkin Donuts without expending any actual effort. However, if the opportunity ever *does* present itself (cash + donut craving + near a Dunkin Donuts), I will go out of my way to buy some [pre-packaged if necessary] Krispy Kreme donuts somewhere else instead.

**edit**
Oh yeah, in a quick effort to see if this was a company-wide anti-cc policy, I ran across this funny story, in which (among lots of hiliarious stuff) I learned that some Dunkin Donuts stores do accept credit cards. Definitely worth a read!
http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit_card