Spindle items
JESSICA FINCH Associate Editor

+ FLIMSY AND LAZY - During one snowy morning I learned the path between me and a cup of coffee is an annoying one. I enjoy a cup of coffee every morning before work. Normally I brew a cup at home in a travel mug. But unfortunately, I learned there is one product I will never again buy generically - coffee filters. My machine brews either one or two cups at a time so I use the smaller, cone-shaped filters. The filters tend to split, clogging the hole for the water to come through with grounds, stopping the whole process. Or even worse, allowing small amounts of grounds to run through, and my finding them in the final gulp. (Remember, it's a travel mug, so I didn't see the bottom of the cup.) During a recent hectic morning in which snow had fallen throughout the night, I started my coffee maker and got ready for work. Going back to retrieve my brew, I realized the machine was clogged and my coffee was stuck in the filter. Out of time, I left for work.

I arrived at the Bee Newspapers office on Main Street in Williamsville, checked my messages and then bundled up to head down to Village Desserts for the coffee I was deprived of at home. As I approached Rock Street, I noticed none of the businesses between The Bee and Village Desserts had been shoveled.

I cautiously stepped into footprints left before me, trying to keep my balance. On the way back, with coffee in hand, I did the same, noticing businesses down the other side of Main Street also had not shoveled. So there are two lessons to be learned here, don't try to save money on generic coffee filters and be sure to shovel the sidewalks outside of your storefronts.

+ VISTA? - For the past month, I checked for sales on laptops because when my roommate moved out so did her desktop. Each week I waited to buy one, and this past Saturday I feared I had waited too long as many models were sold out. Signs were everywhere announcing availability on Jan. 30. You may already know where this is going, but I was still clueless. It wasn't until I stopped at Best Buy on Niagara Falls Boulevard that I learned the computers would be sold on Tuesday with the new Vista software. I was sent to the Best Buy in Hamburg where they had "old" systems available. A very helpful associate walked me through the process since I am technologically clueless. In the end I got a deal I was comfortable with and a voucher for a free Vista CD. But I will admit I was completely in the dark for awhile there, wondering where all the laptops had gone.

+ GIVE KIDS A SMILE DAY - Approximately 800 children and their parents are scheduled for dental clinics in the School of Dental Medicine at the University at Buffalo and the Pediatric Dental Clinic at Women's and Children's Hospital of Buffalo on Feb. 2 to take part in the fifth annual Give Kids a Smile Day. Children from across Western New York who do not have access to dental care will receive free dental treatment on that day as part of UB dental school's community outreach initiative. More than 200 volunteers, including UB dental school faculty, staff and students; Women's and Children's Hospital dentist and staff; private dentists and their staff; and students and faculty from UB's Equal Opportunity Center's Dental Assisting Program and Erie Community College's Hygiene Program will help.