I’m a big believer in outsourcing chores whenever possible. Life is just too short!

My latest discovery is that the same dry cleaners that have kiosks at work, also pick up and deliver your clothes at your home. For free!

I had my first pick-up yesterday and not a minute too soon. Our washer broke the next day so now I’ll have them lander our clothes too while we wait for our repair appointment.

safeway” align=”left” border=”0″ height=”150″ width=”210″ />I’ve missed Webvan ever since their demise. They had excellent service, a great web site, and the best produce I’ve ever seen.

We’ve been using Safeway.com for the past few years but are constantly disappointed by their service. They frequently have out-of-stock items. They also deliver the wrong items at least every other order. And their site sucks.

Enter Amazon Fresh
Amazon is now testing a grocery delivery service in the Seattle area. Could this be the new webvan? Unfortunately, they’re not yet available in the Bay Area but I can’t wait to try it out.

If you own a dog and believe in “outsourcing” chores as much as I do, here are two excellent services:

Dog Duty
This woman-owned business will come to your house on a weekly basis and pick up your dog poop from your yard. They even bring treats for your dog!

Aussie Pet Mobile
Duncan has sensitive skin so he needs special treatment when getting washed. Enter Aussie Pet Mobile. They come to our house with a fully equipped van where they bathe him, clean his ears, trim his nails, etc. I highly recommend it.

Are You Ready!

Bob Harper. Broadway 2008, Hardcover, 240 pages, $22.95

I decided to hire one. I just can’t seem to get motivated to work out anymore. I was doing really well and exercising every day until my trip to Brasil. Then I came back, it got hot and I just couldn’t work out in my garage anymore (where the treadmill is). So I used that as my excuse. For the past 3 months. And now it’s time to get back on that treadmill!

I think one of the biggest disadvantages of being single is that you don’t have a guy around to fix things and set things up. Everything else doesn’t really require a serious boyfriend. But when you need to get complicated stuff hooked up, you can’t really call your one-night stand and ask him to come over and set up your new DVD player so it works with your Tivo, your digital cable, and your VCR. And I’m just using one-night stands as an example. It’s not like I actually condone that practice. And I say complicated stuff because I think that for the most part I can do things on my own. I mean, I can set up my Mac pretty well. I can do some basic fixing of stuff around the house. But anything beyond that and I become pretty useless. So when I switched to a laptop at work and had to buy a DSL router for home so I could hookup my win2k laptop and my G4 to my DSL, I knew that I was in trouble (especially since the router manufacturer doesn’t support Macs and didn’t include any instructions on how to set them up).

That’s why it pays off to have a friend like angryheidi. It’s not because she comes over and does those things for me. I mean, she probably could if she wanted to; after all, she is a smart girl (and angry too so I kinda had to say that). But the real reason why she’s such a great friend to have is that she did a really good job in picking her boyfriend. He’s not only totally knowledgeable about all things electronic, he’s also the calmest person ever and he is blessed with the pokerest of poker faces so that he never laughs when I ask him a silly question.

For that, all I have to say is: "Thank you Heidi!" And most of all: "Thank you Chad!"