choke chains for shoppers

kristin & i finally viewed the infamous cesar millan (the dog whisperer) in action today. by this evening we had applied many of the techniques that cesar suggests in his program. we both admit everything we’ve tried thus far has been quite effective. it’s pretty simple & that’s the beauty of it – show the animal who is control, remain calm, don’t reinforce bad behavior, & most importantly use that choke chain :)

speaking of choke chains; kristin & i could have used some constraint this evening when visiting costco for the first time in over a year. we started to shop at costco when the first one opened in austin over 5 years ago. our once weekly visit for 3 years straight almost always resulted in a bill greater than a $100 bucks. given the size/quantity a purchase resulted in it really is tough to get out of there for less than a $100 bucks.

when our membership expired over a year ago we decided it wasn’t worth renewing. while we rarely let anything we purchased there go to waste we simply decided that shopping there was almost always hectic, we purchased way too many things that weren’t grocery related & that we often didn’t need, & in an effort to not let things go to waste we would sometimes find ourselves consuming more of something just to get rid of it or prevent it to going to waste.

so why did we go back to costco today? for 2 items: paper towels & toilet paper. while we can obviously purchase & do purchase these items at central market & whole foods they are priced sky high in comparison to costco. so i borrowed a co-workers costco card before leaving the office on friday & this evening we made the journey. when we arrived we should have skipped even grabbing a basket/cart. to note, the costco basket/cart can haul more than most full-size trucks. it’s designed to hold more than any of us actually need to purchase.

as soon as we walked through those giant front doors (both the entrance & exit are garage size openings – they actually close like garage doors) the “deals” attacked us. after an hour of shopping we left with a full basket/cart & the goods inside consumed every inch of space in the 4runner. luckily we did get out with our paper towels & toilet paper - $200+ dollars worth :)

in all honesty we weren’t that bad. we bought a lot of fish & chicken, fruits, olive oil, oatmeal, protein shakes, & tortillas so our normal grocery shopping bill should be way less for the next few weeks. we also needed a new dog bed for payton as he’s just went over the 70 pound mark! the *only* thing that we splurged on was a new shirt & pair of jeans for me & kristin bought a couple of tank tops for her.

the moral of the story: as long as cesar millan isn’t brought in to do something about it consumerism will remain alive & well in the USA.