The Vintage Reader

This has absolutely nothing to do with vintage reading, but I feel that I must warn people about the most awful instant meal ever. It's the Simply Asia Sesame Chicken Vegetarian Rice Noodle Soup Bowl. Granted, the oxymoron "sesame chicken vegetarian" should have warned me, as should the price: $1 at Walgreen's. But it looks so delicious on the front of the package.

Looks are deceiving. It tastes, smells, and has the texture of that decorative raffia packing material, but with little tiny dehydrated vegetables throughout. It's going to take, like, a half gallon of Edy's just to get the taste out of my mouth. (Actually, I'm having Wacky Mac--pasta in all different shapes and colors, although I'm not sure whether the colors indicate vegetable content or just food coloring--with the totally awesome Nature's Promise Organic Traditional Pasta Sauce, which is good enough on its own that you can eat it cold with a spoon, like gazpacho. But I think I'll still have some Edy's.)

OTOH, when we got back from Walgreen's I had an email from customer service at Hasbro. Earlier today I filled out a form on their web site to let them know that my I-Cat, a bizarre amalgamation of MP3 speaker and digital pet that I found on clearance at the grocery store, doesn't work. I expected a "too bad, so sad, you didn't keep the receipt" form letter to arrive within a few days. Instead, I got a nice note telling me that they're sorry I was disappointed in their product, and that they're mailing me a shipping label so I can send it back to them and they can replace it. How cool is that?

So the status is pretty much quo.