Welcome, fellow Costco shoppers! I really like LANGER'S OJ, pasteurized so you don't have to refrigerate for weeks, it will keep in the pantry or closet,,, item #334633

It doesn't go sour like most canned OJ in a week after you make it by adding water.
I have had it in the frig for an entire month, and still tastes as fresh and sweet as the day i bought it.
And San Jose-Almaden Costco has it back, again now !!
Hope you can sample some in the store or buy some and see what you think,,,
It is by far my favorite OJ of all the OJs on the market right now, even against my Mom's fresh squeezed from the backyard orange tree with lots of pulp OJ.
Enjoy !!

They also make a mango juice and i mix both in a tall glass. With ice.
Just Wonderful !!

Also love the blood orange soda in the tall bottles , that isn't always available.
So refreshing and not as carbonated as a soda.
Great color and flavor.
Costco buys a good brand here.

Federal withdrawal "minimum distrbution" law MUST BE REVERSED !! Forcing savers to tap their own savings in an IRA before they want to or need to is unnecessary and onerous to the struggling working poor and declining middle class !!

NO, the US govt does Not need this tax money from most at 70 and 1/2, if the Bush tax cuts for the rich are still on the books. How much have we lost, plus interest??

And all the corrupt 'loopholes' and individual 'rifleshots' in the tax code. Yikes !!

And all the waived taxes, like $2B/yr by California in the only state without an oil extraction tax.  Add it up, over decades, and that is a lot of waived potential tax.

Or taking the about $129k tax ceiling off SSN taxes !! How much is that, since day one off SSN ??

Or tax breaks for profitable companies like GE that should be, if we had truly 'Honorable' Congressfolk, paying huge taxes  to the USA every year.

Public school teachers, college/University Degreed and Master's in Ed. licensed AND Very Low Starting pay,,, are still expected even in California to COMPLETELY REMOVE EVERYTHING FROM AN ASSIGNED CLASSROOM ONCE OR TWICE/YEAR !! Not the Janitor or a stong back School District employee hired as a "Mover" !! Just Shocking.

All those bloated Principal and Superintendent salaries,with added cost of 'golden handshakes' and 'golden parachutes' when probably any college grad could perform as well for much less, and all those 'rubber stamp' school district meetings, and all that wasted annual funding in the public shool philosophy of "spend every cent this year, and get the same or more next year", and all the money wasted on 'literature-based' schoolbooks one year and 'phonic-based' schoolbooks the next to hugely profit the publishers,,,

And forget help from the Teacher's Union, almost as worthless as Teamster to unemployed Union Members,'in good standing'.

In all this public tax money largesse, the most important professionals, the teachers, are still starting salary vastly underpaid and on top of THAT insulted by being the public school's "Moving Company".

Just shocking.

Was listening to another Great inside story this morning on NPR, "the Eulogy for the Peach" about Japanese-American farmer Mas Masimoto and his sweet juicy Suncrest eating, not canning, peaches, picked and rotting in the San Joaquin Valley, southern Central Valley

I would like to likewise honor my father's favorite peach, and my Grandfather's livelyhood from the Sutter Buttes area of the other, Northern end of the Central Valley, the Sacramento Valley, where the huge main river by comparison has not Yet been sucked completely dry by greedy farmers subsidized with way too cheap, 70% of state's entire supply, water prices.

North of Marysville up the cheap narrow 2 lane county road was my Grandfather's small edible peach orchard of Melrose peaches. My dad was expected to go to school and get good grades,  be on the football team and do Herculean amounts of childwork, physical labor around the small farm. They were relatively poor, but ate well off their land and my father grew up very strong and healthy from all the pruning, horse and mule chores, and other general farm chores that city kids to this day do not have a clue about.

Long before ww2 ,for many decades,  my Grandfather's family had employed one Japanese-American family who lived in a house behind the main house and where my father was invited to join the family in their daily late afternoon big wood hot tub soaks, all naked, after cleaning off before entering.  I wish he could have remembered their family name, to include them in our family history and Californians family history, but Dad died at 95 suddenly last year and Mom and the family have suffered a terrible loss. He taught famously at college level and was a multiple decorated war hero , whose exploits are still "classified Secret" and even after 50 yrs , soldiers of his exceptional bravery will possibly never ever have their true heroic stories told.  What a national waste !!

My Dad's sister wasn't interested in these hired farm workers and their strange hot tub soaking, but dear old Dad learned Japanese and became very close to the family, respectfully, even tho I gather the parents were typically rather racist of everybody generally,,, non-white, non-Protestant back in those old days. And then he has to go to the very front of the Pacific theatre war and fight the Japanese. It must have been hard for him, tho he was to his death extremely patriotic. He took us to San Jose's tiny Japantown many times as children to eat a meal. And the Japanese-American family had been shipped off to one of the California desert prison camps. Such an injustice.

Bank of America foreclosed on the farm when the great depression hit and without shelter or peaches, the 2 kids were given to relatives in Sf and Oakland. My Grandfather took personal blame  for the G.Depression, tho it was not in the least his fault. Can you imagine the hardships?

Several years ago the last of Grandfather's delicious juicy big and beautiful Melrose peach trees died in the San Jose-Willow Glen backyard.
None of the local garden centers knew how to order another Melrose , so my busy busy Dad gave up looking. Boy scout troop leader. He gave so much to the neighbors and neighborhood over his long lifetime, now forgotten by San Jose.

So I took up the challenge for him and my appetite !  I phoned lots of State Ag.civil servants who all said,"I have been working decades in the Sacramento Valley and never seen or heard of a Melrose peach."

I called the rich and very famous UCDavis university and talked to employees in their famous plant reference library who all said, "There is no record at all of this Melrose peach every existing or even being grown in all of California."

I went online and talked to arborists and tree experts all over the United States. No luck.
No one remember the pre-canning peach days, when you ate peaches ripe and juicy and full of flavor right off the tree.
I was so lucky as we had many fruit trees in our yards front and back.

Goodbye, Melrose peach.

May and Inside Passage HUGE TRAVEL DECEPTION !!

I had about a dozen SF Bay Area travel agencies ,"Cruise Specialists", tell me that May was "not ordinarily too early to see herring come in in masses, and bring the whales salmon and Orcas".

So I booked not 7 days but 2 weeks , as I was saving up for this desired trip for years !!
The smaller cruise ship was very luxurious on boarding off Seattle, and the recent cooking school grad chef was much better than me, and the views around the SE corner of Vancouver Island were truely Breath-taking, if you love Nature.

But no Orcas.  For 2 full week weeks, all the way up to almost Glacier Bay !! Not one Orca. Did you know Glacier Bay charges cruises ships HUGE ENTRANCE FEES !? Huge, like the $300 for a 45ft bus with say only 5 guests to enter Yosemite !! Glacier Bay needs to be honest and publicly confess this fully.

And only a few whales, maybe a dozen,,, in 2 long full outside on deck weeks ?!!

I asked the ship's crew.
All told me quite frankly that "MAY IS TOO EARLY TO SEE MANY OR ANY PODS OF ORCAS, UNLESS YOU ARE VERY LUCKY, AS THE HERRING TINY FISH ARE NOT HERE YET IN LARGE ENOUGH NUMBERS. EVERYBODY UP HERE KNOWS THIS. DIDN'T THEY TELL YOU the truth DOWN THERE IN THE LOWER 48 ?"

And the cruise lines charge FULL PRICE for MAY , when it should be severely discounted, like a repositioning cruise.
Don't fall for this MASSIVE TRAVEL INDUSTRY LIE, and waste $1000s by going too early on the INSIDE PASSAGE from Seattle/Vancouver to Alaska !!
Wait until June, at least.
July is even better.

"Everybody know this,,, up here.  Didn't they tell you the truth,,, down there ?"

Another Inside Passage "trick" involving float plane rides.
On the ship they said they could negociate a low price for this fun amazing excursion.  But I did as well on my own on the dock ! And then the small plane company last minute switched the 3 of us from the ADVERTISED roomy, bigger engine Beaver or Otter, feel safer, to a tiny engine and cramped Cessna !!
THIS MUST BE A HUGE AND COMMON DECEIT IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND ALASKA !!
We were all bouncing in buffeting air and hanging on for dear life !! Next time I will cancel and find a more honest float plane excursion company !!

Don't think all the cruise ship dock restaurants are safe !!
No grade signs on front doors,,, and I got sooo sick at one in St.Petersburg !!
All these restaurants should be health inspected much more often and big grade signs on the front door !! I skipped a paid for meal onboard ship to eat "locally with the locals".
Big mistake, like in Mexico.

Happy trails !!

Yelp,,, I don't trust them anymore !!

A local business threatened me after a bad review with "I know where you live."  Creepy !!
And Yelp did nothing !!

How can a body shop on the West side of SJ airport do such lousy work and for so much money,,, and only have "all 5star ratings" ,,,?

Frequent "common" corruption in San Mateo County Small Claims Courts

This is what the Bailiff told me , shockingly, after a visiting Judge had failed to get signatures from plantiffs and defendant Before hearing the case, then mistake noticed after and His correct, evidence supported, confession letter admitted Guilty Verdict was dismissed and the case was rescheduled for another day and a Resident Judge, who ruled the defendant innocent !, the reversed judgement, to COVER-UP THE VISITING JUDGES PROCEDURAL ERROR ,,, in not getting signatures before hearing the case !!

The official court Bailiff explained to us outside the courtroom, in the Casa Mia apts vs Ms.Pennell case, that this miscarriage of justice "happens all the time in San Mateo County Small Claims Court cases".

We victims of this injustice contacted the State Attorney General of California office and others judicial offices with no further action taken on the matter. Even the Grand Jury was "not interested" in common judicial corruption in San Mateo County Courthouses!!

Shocking.

Costco fellow-shoppers!! Avoid STRING CHEESE , now labeled "Galbani" , strings poorly and tastes "C-" to same Fr. CO.s old Sorrento Precious label, a solid "A-" in taste and tearing

Huge difference in taste and tearing. Costco needs to tell the Fr. Co. what it wants , best for their customers.

And Costco's selling some organic string cheese is Ridiculously overpriced !! What, about 40c each vs 15c,,, outrageous.

Guess it is time for those Costco Corporate Buyers to get busy and earn their large salaries !!

Soil Logic's " Liquid Gypsum" , about $25 for 2 1/2 gallons. Not Recommended.

No noticeable effect in San Jose, Ca. , famous for sticky clay soil.

Suggest instead brown granular gypsum for lawns and flower beds and general soil tilth, which is about $8 for 50# at most professional turf supply stores, like the one in Campbell, Ca.   Brown neutral color vs old white gypsum powder that is not very disolveable,,, quickly dissolves in watering, quick results tho moderate with infamously extreme clay soil in San Jose, Ca.

Also suggest alfalfa pellets, mixed and buried below topsoil.  Nowadays about $16 for 40-50#  at most pet and feed stores.  Twenty years ago was $6 a large bag !!  Lots of worms and worm casting fertilizer, quick results, usually mix and cover in late winter and again in mid-Summer.