View From The Hills

Sushi for lunch.  Sushi for dinner.  Sushi twice in one week.  Awesome.  Our favorite sushi place in Columbia is new and inhabits the old Blockbuster by our house.  We like to call it Blockbuster Sushi.  I really think they should consider the name.  Easier to pronounce.  The service is good, the ambiance is nice, but most importantly, the food is incredible.  I get so carried away with those ridiculously rich specialty rolls that I forgot (until today) how good their fish is alone.  I took a picture of lunch today:

Now if sushi isn’t your thing (which baffles me), they have a hibachi grill menu that is the cat’s pajamas.  Oh the steak, chicken, shrimp, and fried rice!  I should mention though, that Blake’s good sense keeps him from being delighted by the spontaneous fires.  He promptly waved “bye bye” and began crawling out of his chair. 

It’s about as pricey as you would expect sushi to be, although I will say that you might save a few bucks over the other popular places in Columbia. 

Now, go and treat yourself to some sushi. 

Maruha (Blockbuster) Steakhouse and Sushi

6410 Freetown Rd
Columbia, MD 21044-4050
(410) 531-6288

I feel like there are so many more complaints than praises when it comes to dealing with customer service anywhere.  Feel free to go back and read about a few of my less-than-stellar customer service experiences.  But when a company really wows me, I feel like they deserve a giant pat on the back.  I know that making my day is really not the thrill of their lives, but they still put forth such an effort!

Herb Gordon Nissan of Silver Spring, MD is where I will buy all of my cars.  I will just have to learn to love Nissans (I certainly love the one I bought) because I have never before found a car dealership that I love.  Jim Coleman Honda could learn a thing or two from these people.

As many of you know, I LOVE car shopping.  The fact that it’s a slimey business and most people are out to rip you off just increases the excitement level for me.  I take every aspect very seriously and I pretty much float on air during the entire process.  This dealership is the only one that displayed their lowest price upfront (well-their internet price, the price I saw on the windshield was 2k higher).  It was the first one I visited, though, so of course I didn’t believe it.  After compiling my weeks of research and my tedious visits to 7 more dealerships, I found that their price was actually the best deal I could find!  I mean, I really tried, and I could not beat this price.  It helps that it was the car I wanted most.  I was still over budget, though, so they worked with me to get more for my car, and some perks on theirs.

Our saleswoman, Debbie, was awesome.  The finance department was great.  Seriously, everyone was friendly and sincere.  None of that slimey-ness anywhere that you can sense at most car dealerships.  While we waited to deal with financing, Debbie made popcorn for Blake and let him play in the Nissan Cube, so he pretty much thinks it’s Chuck. E. Cheese.   To top things off, I needed work on one of the tires last week.  Wow, I was so impressed with that service department.  Besides throwing in the new tire for free since the car was fairly new, they offered me a loaner car and  switched carseats for me (no small feat).  They really shouldn’t have had to do that, it was a fairly quick job, but I think Keith felt sorry for me trying to wrangle a 2 year old in the waiting area. In fact, the super-nice mechanic who was doomed with the job of unhooking a carseat that my husband had installed spent 20 minutes on it and smiled the whole time.  I even offered him the opportunity to call my perfectionist husband and personally tell him what he thinks of his super duper carseat installation job.  He only laughed.  No cursing whatsoever.  Upon pickup, they drove my car into the garage so we wouldn’t have to switch things out in the rain.  They helped me with the seat again as well.  And when I came back 15 minutes later to tell the nice guy that I left my groceries in the trunk of the loaner, he ran out in the rain to get them for me.  Now that’s service.  With a smile.

I really recommend this place.  I have no stake in this.  But you will walk in and feel like everyone really is happy to help you.  How many places can you say that about?  Ask for Deb.

It’s Springtime, and it’s the time of year I try to remember to have our gutters cleaned.  It pains Stu to pay someone to do something he’s capable of doing himself, but I enjoy that my son has a father and am willing to pay $100 a year to keep my baby daddy off a 3 story ladder propped up by sandbags on the side of a hill.  That being said, we have used the same company twice now and I would like to present them with:

THE ESTEEMED BUSINESS AWARD

Unfortunately for them, this is a fictional award, but I still think they deserve it.  Nick Rivers Gutters came out again yesterday, and again I was thoroughly impressed.  About 18 months ago, when they were here last, they noticed that our roof was failing (it had a huge dimple right over Blake’s room) and even went to the trouble to take pictures and send them to my email so we could see what was going on.  We were so grateful to have out roof replaced before it was an emergency!  Whether or not there’s a problem, they will still take pictures of your clean gutters and send them to you so you know they were cleaned! Nick is an honest guy, I know this because he could have “taken” us on a couple of occasions.  He caulked some leaks in out gutters yesterday to keep them working for another 2-3 years.  We will eventually need to replace them, and probably would have paid to have it done already.  For this I really appreciate him helping us stretch our money.  He also explained what we would probably be paying when we do have them replaced and pointed out some ways that others in the industry can rip you off.  He is the owner of the company and knew who we were as soon as he answered the phone.  It is so rare to have someone work on your house in any capacity that you feel like you can trust!  I know those of you who are reading this in Maryland need your gutters cleaned, call him!!

www.nickrivers.com

443-336-7278

If you have a baby in diapers, or using formula, you should be using a wholesale store.  I fought it for awhile, because a Costco membership was $50 annually.  Now, it might be hard to plop down that initial $50, but don’t forget that that is $4.17 a month.  Their baby formula alone saved me $60 a month.  Holy cow, in the time Blake was using formula I saved $480!  Tell me that isn’t worth $50.  Let’s not get started on how badly mothers are being ripped off on formula.  I don’t know the numbers on diapers and wipes, but Stu and I think we’re saving about 40% there. 

The reason I choose to promote Costco in particular is that I LOVE their store-brand, Kirkland.  Everything I have bought that said Kirkland on it has completely exceeded my expectations, if fact, I would go so far as to say these products have been better than their name brand equivalent.  Everything.  This includes diapers, wipes, formula, milk, cheese, water, plasticware (we’re remodeling), paper towels, toilet paper, cleaning products, snacks, medicine, and on and on and on.  The produce is not only about 30-50% cheaper than the grocery store (depending on what you get), but the quality has put our grocery store to shame.  Most of their produce and meat is organic, and there are great selections.  Now I do understand that buying things like produce in bulk sounds scary, and it does have to be done thoughtfully or you end up throwing a bunch away.  But after our recent food awakening (we read In Defense of Foodby Micheal Pollan), we have decided that produce should be the bulk of our diet.  Therefore, I have gotten very creative when it comes to preparing all kinds of veggie-tastic meals (back when I got to prepare my own meals, I miss you kitchen!! Kisses!!).  Anyways, even if you don’t buy into the bulk produce thing, alot of meats can be bought in bulk and frozen. 

Hey, speaking of bulk, if you have the time to find them, many warehouses have wholesale stores.  Around here, we have Ann’s House of Nuts.  If you live around here and haven’t discovered that place then you don’t even know how sad you are to be missing out!  Trail Mixes and candy, and dried fruit and (of course) nuts for next to nothing!  Pure excitement.   

So, Costco, you totally owe me a free membership. 

If you have contributions or ideas, share them, I’ll try to incorporate them into this blog. 

If you find this topic to be boring, sorry, I tend to write about whatever is taking up the most of my time.  And right now, you’re looking at it!