I only have a minute, as I am in the middle of sorting through a perplexing and surprising Vons.com home delivery (Hebrew National franks? When did I order those, how did they get in my bag and was I erroneously charged for them? Did Vons give me someone else's wieners? And... Free samples of Brookside Dark Chocolate Acai with Blueberry and Quaker Apple Cinnamon Crunchy Granola? I didn't ask for them, but hey -- who am I to argue with free samples? Love me some Quaker!).
I wanted to quickly comment on Ghirardelli -- you may or may not recall that I got a sundae there back in 2012, during the Cars Land preview, and reported on it with prices in my TR. I enjoyed the taste of it -- it tasted fine -- but I thought the prices were/are way too expensive (even with the AP discount) for what it was. I can't recall the sundae vividly, but it seems to me that the hot fudge was minimal in mine too. In fact, it
was minimal. I remember eating it and wondering why there was so little hot fudge and why it wasn't even...hot!
When rumors began swirling last year that my old reliable friend -- Dreyer's Peppermint Wonderland ice cream -- somehow inexplicably landed at Ghirardelli instead of at Gibson Girl or Clarabelle's for the holiday season, where it should have been, my first thought was, "Yeah, but... I don't want to pay almost $10 to get a scoop or two of peppermint ice cream when I could get 2 or 3 cartons of it for that much money at the store!" The ice cream was gone by the time I got to Ghirardelli, but I don't think I would have bought it at those prices anyway. Gibson Girl does not accept the AP discount, but they are cheaper than Ghirardelli!
My sundae didn't splash or drip on my clothes, I don't think, but it got all over my hands because the cup was sticky.
(And, by the way, the CM who told you that the Main Street Cone Shop had been closed for years was wrong, I think. It hasn't been open on the last few trips I've made to DLR, but it hasn't been closed
that long either. They sold peppermint ice cream there in one or two fairly recent holiday seasons, so I am thinking it was open a couple of years ago.)
Also -- and this is the most important thing -- I was robbed of getting a cute Easter sample of chocolate!
I specifically went into Ghirardelli on April 14th, which was closer to Easter than when you were there, to get a sample. And I got a sample -- but definitely not a cute Easter chocolate! They must have run out of them. They gave me the standard chocolate with caramel sample.
Love the seahorse photo -- seahorses are the stallions of the sea (that's what I was always told in school, when we covered oceanography and various aquatically-themed subjects!)! I also love the duck photos in the previous installment!
If you have a chance -- and before they are taken down -- see if you can find "
Snow Bride" (for which my IMDB review/commentary just went live), "
A Very Merry Mix-Up" and "
A Snow Globe Christmas" (from Hallmark, Hallmark and Lifetime, respectively) on YouTube. (You said you saw "Let it Snow," with Candace Cameron Bure, but I don't think you saw these?) I found all 3 of them in their full-length versions on YouTube a few days ago, and since those 3 are some of the better TV holiday movies in recent years, you might like them. Also, you said you liked "
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" -- another one of my favorites -- so that's why I think you might like these too, especially "
Snow Bride" and "
A Snow Globe Christmas."
Back to my Vons order to uncover more unexpected treasures and horrors...