Dec 12, 2005
....the latest

Holiday Shopping

Ever since the summer, I've been dying to get a 5" power angle grinder.

These little babies came on sale at 'Nadian Tire and were promptly followed by BMR, RONA and Home Depot (and possibly WalMart) for only $65. Where and when have you ever heard of a power angle grinder at that price?

Well, I hadn't heard of a power angle grinder at all, actually, but it sure looked like something I should have. I racked my brain trying to think of a project I have always been frustrated from attempting, because of a lack of such a beastie, but I could not think of one.

After about the third weekly flyer advertising these, I actually visited the store where they had boxes and boxes of these made up into a wall; and, you could actually hold one, you know? I did so, but nothing came to me. I shyly asked the 'Nadian tire hardware guy if I could widen my driveway with it by cutting the asphalt roadside curb, (at an "angle", eh, and it might need "grinding" to smoothen it off afterward...); but he just gave me a look of maximum-pixels Gallic astonishment, as if I had asked whether it would be a handy gadget to go scuba-diving with; so I inferred not. My neighbour didn't know what a PAG was either, or what it could be used for. My dad, or his friends, had never had one or mentioned one either.

The sales continued all summer, outbidding each other every week. Us guys in the neighbourhood were absolutely on tenterhooks, but the ads never once offered a helpful hint, like, "makes stripping the barbeque fun", say; or "refinish your windows while listening to satellite radio on our MP3's", say. In the end, I reluctantly concluded that someone in North America had accidentally ordered an aircraft-carrier-load of angle grinders from a computerized factory in SE Asia, when they had meant to order, say, port-side sidewinder-missile jig re-jiggers; and were trying to unload them on an unsuspecting public. I mean it's easy to do, type a single digit wrong into a suitably-globalized computerized ordering process these days, and who knows what you might get lapping up at dockside three weeks later.

Anyway, 'Nadian Tire still has all these angle grinders, it seems. They are now on sale in the Holiday Flyer, for, get this: $23! A $65 saving! Who would have thought! I guess a lot of guys are going to get one under their Holiday tree, and will be looking for something (an axe?) to grind on Holiday morning. Now, if I could only get a 400W DC inverter, or a mobile windmill-battery combo, I could take that angle grinder on the road, plugged into my cigarette lighter, and grind anything that might come along... Ho, ho, ho, eh? __________________________________________________________