A Chuckle For You

I came across this the other day. The boys and I found it thoroughly amusing, as we all like Queen music and well, we have a strange sense of humor.

Post Thanksgiving 2009

Betcha can't guess what we had for lunch Friday. And today. And possibly tomorrow.........

We had a great Thanksgiving, as usual. It was just the five of us. The menu consisted of:
Turkey - betcha didn't see that one coming, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, broccoli casserole, gravy, biscuits, cranberry jelly, cheesecake, sweet potato pie, and pecan pie. The links for these recipes will be posted sometime today if time permits.

We had a slight change of plans Thanksgiving morning. For the last few years I have been brining our turkeys and then smoking them on the grill. (I initially had just typed "smoking them" in the last sentence, but I just knew some wiseacre would write and ask how to roll them, so I added "on the grill")! I put the turkey in the brine Wednesday night and Thursday morning when it was time to put the bird on, the grill wouldn't work. I use the gas grill for this because I only use one burner which the hickory chips sit on, and the other burners are off and the turkey sits over these. The charcoal grill would be too small to allow the turkey to cook over indirect heat.

We have never had a problem with the grill, so of course it figures it might as well not work on Thanksgiving! Anyway, I roasted it in the oven. I was still determined to get some type of smoking with it, so I put a pan of wet hickory chips on my oven floor. It certainly was not smoked like it would have been on the grill, and it may even be debatable if the chips did very much at all, but I felt better! At least the brine itself gave it a good flavor and it was extremely juicy.

It was a very good (and filling!) day. We all ate entirely too much. But really, isn't that the purpose of Thanksgiving? To eat until you need to loosen your waistband? Kidding aside, I was (and am) thankful for everything the Lord has given me. As grace was said at the table on Thanksgiving, I was reminded of just how much I have been blessed with, and was (and am) grateful. I hope everyone had a wonderful day too. Happy Post Thanksgiving, y'all!

Home Again, Home Again

We are back home again. Andy and I have been back and forth to Delaware for about the last month and then spent the last two weeks there. Yesterday's drive home was not very enjoyable. I didn't even have any coffee before we left, it rained and was foggy the entire trip, and I seriously had trouble keeping my eyes open! There's just something about rainy days that can lull me off to sleep. Granted, when you're behind the wheel it's not a good idea. One good thing was that traffic wasn't bad and the other drivers were actually decent. No one was passing anyone, and no one seemed to be in a big hurry. Well, except when we got closer to home. We knew we were back in our home county again because the drivers started acting like they usually do here. We knew we were truly home then because of the ignorant drivers. Oh, well. No offense to any of my blog readers who may live in the same county as I do, but I am pretty sure you don't drive stupidly because if you did, you wouldn't be the kind of person who would read a blog like mine!

Anyway, I have a ton of things to do to get ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow. I'll write more about that when I have time. I also haven't unpacked yet. And I have to work. And brine the turkey. And make bread for the stuffing. And clean the house. And, and, and..........hmmm, maybe I'll take a nap instead.

P.S. to Susie who left a comment for my blog - after driving home three hours from Delaware yesterday in the rain, I guess my brain was soggy and foggy too. On the email I received to moderate comments, I intended to erase the email itself; not reject the comment. I'm not sure what happened, but I think I must have chosen the wrong choice because your comment isn't posted and when I went to check it said it had been rejected. Sorry about that. Please comment again and I'll be more awake this time when moderating comments!

Great Week!

Not only was it a pretty good week all the way around, but I had a pretty good week couponing, too. I have updated this week's lists on Frugal Finds. My total for all the stores this week came to $193.63 before sales and coupons; what I actually paid was $54.27. That's 72% off! How great is that?!

Now I'm off to do my real job! Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

New Content!

After a painfully slow start, I am finally making headway on my links. Click on the links above to see what I've been up to. Be kind; it's still a work in progress!

Swagbucks

I wrote about Swagbucks in this post, but I wanted to follow up on it for anyone who might have still been on the fence about using it. I used their toolbar feature so that there is a search box right at the top of my page every time I'm on the web. This works out particularly well because when I'm working and need to look something up, I just go there to search, and earn Swagbucks at the same time. Although there are lots and lots of items that you can use your Swagbucks towards, I chose to trade mine in for Amazon gift cards. So far I have earned $25.00 in gift cards and am on the way to earning another one (each $5.00 gift card from Amazon is 45 Swagbucks). That's $25.00 I have to spend at Amazon just for doing what I do during the course of a day on the web anyway. How great is that?!

A Fine Day for Golf

Andy and I were in Delaware last week and last Sunday Dad, Jerry, Andy, my dear brother and his children and I went to the local driving range to hit a bucket (or several buckets!) of balls. It was a beautifully crisp fall day. Ahh.....I love fall. Anyway, it was a great day!

Construction Zone!

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm in the process of making some changes to my blog, so if things on here seem wonky now and then, well, it's just me! I only have time to work on it in bits and pieces, though, so thank you for your patience.

Tom's New Blog

Tom has started a new blog. The link for it is over to the right. Well, we (his family) seem to be the only ones who call him Tom; the rest of the world knows him as Tommy! You have to see this movie that he made, with special effects.

Well, off to work - just wanted to put in a plug for my kid's stuff!

Such a deal!

Here's a deal for ya - I was looking at next week's (09/09 - 09/15) sale paper from Food Lion and I saw that there was a very good loss leader (loss leaders are the things usually on the front page of the ad, usually a very good price, and the store generally won't make a lot of money off of - they are used to lure you into the store to buy the stuff that they will make money on). Wisk laundry detergent, regularly priced at $6.49, is sale priced at $2.99, with a limit of 2. The sale price alone is good with a savings of about 58% right there, but here is a place you can print a coupon for $1.00 off of that, bringing the price down to $1.99 per bottle, making a savings of 72%. After you print one coupon, hit your browser's back button and print out another one. The limit is two coupons from the site so if you try again it will come up and say that you have reached your print limit. I think I have a new hobby - this coupon thing is getting fun!

Oh, and I want to clear up something I wrote in my last post - when I wrote that I use the treadmill, Bowflex and Wii Fit, the problem is that I don't use any of these consistently - sporadically at best - otherwise I would have lost more than 25 pounds by now!

Guess what I just did?!

Guess what I just did?! I just registered for a belly dancing class. Go ahead - read that sentence again. I'll wait.

Okay, now that you've recovered your sensibilities, let me tell you about it. I had received the latest program offerings from our county parks and recreation department and was absently thumbing through it thinking that maybe I'd like to take a class in something, and lo and behold, Beginning Belly Dancing caught my eye. I bought a DVD to teach myself a while back, but never actually got around to it more than once, so I figured I needed something a little more structured! After just one time with the DVD my arms and middle were sore, so I know it must do something.

I'm looking for something different in terms of exercising. The heart rate monitor I wrote about a while back is connected to software in which I input my exercise heart rate, progress, weight, and stuff like that. Every so often there is a Fitness Challenge in which anyone who belongs to the group can participate and challenge themselves for 12 weeks. The latest challenge began yesterday and I really want to do well this time. Last time I came in #328 out of 2,211 participants, so not too bad, and between that challenge and the one before it I lost 25 pounds, but I still have quite a bit more to lose. So, I was looking for a different form of exercise besides the treadmill, Bowflex and Wii Fit that I do now.

I'm also dragging my poor friend kicking and screaming to this class. When I asked her if she'd go to the class with me, she asked if there wasn't a geriatric quilting class or something else we could take! She is so funny; when she finally agreed to take the class, she told me not to expect her to be as enthusiastic about it as I was; her husband was enthusiastic enough for the both of them!

Also, had to update on my coupon adventures. I made a last trip to Kmart on Saturday night before the double coupon event ended and got even more stuff! When I went the first time they were out of stock on a lot of items that I wanted and they had restocked by the time I went back on Saturday. My total for Saturday's trip came to around $80.00 and after coupons it was $30.00. But my coupon adventures were not over yet! I saw that Giant had Oscar Mayer bacon Buy One Get One Free, which in itself was a great deal, but I also had COUPONS! So I went to Giant yesterday and bought 6 packages of bacon. My total came to $40.92, then the Buy One Get One amounts came off, then my coupons came off, and my grand total was $11.97, which works out to roughly $1.99 per package, which is 64% off the regular price.

Well, that's all for right now on this rainy Tuesday morning. Guess I'd better get to work now. Happy Tuesday!

It's funny that it doesn't look like so much spread out here, but if you look at the individual items and add up what their cost is, you'll get an idea of how much I really saved. Oh, and there were two Coffee Mate creamers in the refrigerator and we forgot to take out to add to the picture!

The Damage

Okay, here's the rundown on my Kmart shopping trip. When I walked in the door my very first stop was at the customer service desk where I verified what I had been told the day before. It was true! The lady said I could use as many coupons as I wanted. Little did she know! The employees at Kmart were the absolute best. Every single one of them was nice- even the poor cashier who had to scan my coupons! At the end, two other employees and two managers walked up to the register where the cashier was (still!) scanning coupons and excitedly waited for my total! I think it was interesting that one of the managers was in line behind me with a handful of coupons herself!

While the employees were wonderful, unfortunately, the customers were complete horses' patoots. Well, except for one nice lady. Whenever anyone got in line behind me, I nicely let them know that I had a LOT of coupons and that I would probably be a while checking out. Every one of them said, "Oh, that's okay. I can wait." Within five minutes they were giving me dirty looks, rude comments, and fuming out of the checkout lane to go to another register. I don't understand this - I told them right up front, and there were other (faster) options of checking out. Except for the one lady I mentioned - when I told her I had numerous coupons, she just smiled and said, "Honey, waiting in line doesn't bother me at all. If that's all I have to worry about, I'm a lucky woman. I have a grandson with a brain tumor and compared to that, waiting in a line is nothing." I told her that I admired her perspective. More people should be like that.

I was going to list all the items here, but changed my mind. It's too much stuff! When the cashier finished ringing me up (before coupons) my total came to $353.69. Then the coupons started. And went on, and on, and on, and on............... and eventually my new total came up and it was - drum roll please - $119.35. That is a savings of roughly 67%. Several of the items ended up being free, almost all the deodorants, toothbrushes and toothpastes. As I was deciding what products to buy, I would figure out my savings with the coupon and if it didn't mean a savings of at least 60% or more, it didn't go into the cart.

Oh, I do hope they don't stop super double coupons. I'm really hooked now! The pictures of my goods are above - and if you're wondering about the dog items, those of you who know we don't have a dog - some went to Sam's family for their dog and some are for our neighbor's dog, whom we kind of adopted in a grandparent kind of way - we enjoy his company but he always goes back to his own home afterwards!

Look out Kmart!

Attention Kmart shoppers - you might want to stay home tomorrow 'cause I'm going to clean out the shelves and annoy people! Well, only those who have a problem with coupon-users. Let me explain. Kmart is having a "super double coupon" week right now where they will double coupons up to and including $2.00. How great is that?! Unfortunately, not all stores are participating. Here is a list where you can check if your local store will be participating. I had written to Kmart customer service last week and asked (before I got that handy list) and was told that my local Kmart was the only one in the area participating. I say again - How great is that?!

I went Sunday evening to "test the waters" and they are fine! There are rules to the event in that you are limited to using 10 coupons per transaction, so when I went Sunday I just wanted to see how things would work out, using just a few coupons that I had. I had never heard of, much less participated in, a super double coupon week before. Well, I am hooked now. My total for the items you see in the picture below came to $27.21. Then I handed over THE COUPONS. My total dropped to $6.06. For all that stuff you see. Yeah, I'm going back tomorrow!

Also, after reading some other people's blogs it seems that not all Kmarts are adhering to the 10-coupon rule, so I called my local one to ask and was told that there was no limit. The lady that I spoke with said, "If you have a cart full of stuff and a coupon for everything in that cart, we'll take them!" I hope I don't find out tomorrow that she was mistaken.

I promptly hung up and started cutting and organizing my coupons. I am sad, though, to learn that this will be the last super double coupon event indefinitely, and even if they do change their corporate minds, another one won't be forthcoming until sometime in 2010. Darn. I was just getting the hang of this, too. Well, there's always tomorrow. Literally!

My longsuffering hubby!

I just had to write and share what just happened to my poor hubby. After a 14-hour day today (leaving here at 4:00 AM and going straight to the job in Delaware), Jerry stopped at the ATM in Rehoboth to take money out of his business account and deposit it into our personal account for a payment that was automatically set to come out tomorrow. Let me start by stating that there is only one Bank of America ATM in all of Delaware. Anyway, he withdrew cash from his business account and then went to immediately put it into the other account.

The ATM came up with a message that it couldn't accept some of his cash. This was the cash that he had just gotten out of the ATM! He tried several times. He has had problems with this machine before but this time it was really being stubborn. I was on his truck phone with him the entire time. We would talk for a while and then he'd try the machine again. Finally, while we were still talking, I connected with Bank of America customer service online to try to get some help. Jerry stayed in the parking lot where the ATM was in case they could somehow help.

After waiting forever, I finally got a customer service representative who was, well, nicely put, incompetent. The messages typed back and forth went something like this:
Bank of America (BOA): How can I help you?

Me: My husband is out of state and trying to make a deposit at an ATM to cover a payment that will be automatically withdrawn from our personal account at midnight tonight. The ATM will not accept the cash deposit. Any suggestions?

BOA: (After a LONG wait for a response) You should not use non-Bank of America ATM's when out of the United States. You will need to use wire transfer when out of the country. (I am NOT making this up - this was the conversation).

Me: I didn't say he was out of the country; he is in Delaware and our accounts are in Maryland, and it is a Bank of America ATM!

BOA: What is your card number and I will look the transaction up for you.

Me: Card number? There was no transaction. The machine won't let him deposit cash to cover a payment that is coming out at midnight, and it's the only ATM in Delaware.

BOA: I need your card number to find out exactly why your transaction was denied.

Me: I don't think you understand - there WAS no transaction!

BOA: I will get my manager.

BOA manager: (After an interminable wait) Thank you for notifying us about the malfunctioning ATM machine at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. We will try to have it fixed as soon as possible. Thank you for banking with Bank of America.

I did not make ANY of that up. That was the conversation. *Sigh*

Since I had been reading the responses the whole time to Jerry since we were still connected via his truck phone, I had gotten nearly to the end of that lopsided online conversation when he decided to call customer service from his cell phone. Finally, after a long wait and being transferred once, they took care of everything for us. They linked our business and personal accounts online (which they normally don't do) so that we could transfer money from account to account whenever we needed to and Jerry wouldn't have to stop at the ONLY ATM in the state to make these transfers anymore. So, finally, two hours later the problem got resolved. Breathing a heavy sigh of relief, Jerry left to go back to the trailer and get a good night's sleep.

Shortly after he left the parking lot we were talking about everything that had just happened when he said, "What the.........? What did I do?" He said a policeman was pulling him over. Then when he pulled over, he said a backup arrived. One police officer walked up to his driver side and the backup walked up to his passenger side, both shining flashlights into his truck. Since I was still on the truck phone, I heard the entire conversation. Turns out that several people had called and reported a suspicious person lurking at the ATM and in the shopping center parking lot for a couple of hours. When Jerry opened his glove box to get his registration out, the backup officer on the passenger side seemed awfully interested in shining his flashlight in the glove box - Jerry informed him that what he was looking at was Red Yeast Rice - an herbal cholesterol lowering medicine that I make him take! Jerry explained what had happened at the ATM and after checking his tags and license and such, they apologized and said that they had to follow up on it because they had gotten so many phone calls, wished him a good night and left. Has this guy had a bad evening or what?!

So, my poor hubby is an exhausted man, somewhat humiliated by being pulled over not only by one, but two police officers on Route 1, the main thoroughfare in Rehoboth Beach. All for trying to make a deposit at an ATM. Let this be a lesson to any readers - make your necessary deposits far ahead of schedule, don't linger in parking lots too long, and keep your Red Yeast Rice in plain view at all times!

Can it be? A new post from me?

Just a post to say that I am still kickin'! We have been busy around here. We rented a dumpster for three weeks that sat in our driveway, and boy did we fill it. We have been here 15 years and in that time have accumulated more stuff than anyone could ever possibly need.

I am very proud of ourselves, though. We got rid of stuff that we were hanging onto "just because." Not too long after I got married a great deal of my personal belongings got thrown away that were in my mother's house including love letters, poems and drawings by my husband, my high school yearbooks, years of journals, and other stuff that I didn't get out of my closet fast enough after I married and moved out. Because of that I have had a tendency to save EVERYTHING! I also tend to be sort of a "proxy saver" for the boys - I save stuff of theirs just in case they want it some day.

Well, we had a long discussion and I decided to let the boys decide for themselves what they deemed worthy of keeping, and to my surprise it was very little. I also decided that I didn't need to hold onto "stuff" anymore - I could keep the memories and get rid of the stuff. Some things just can't be replaced, like letters, drawings, yearbooks, but what I had here was WAY less important and so out it went. I even got rid of my depression glass dishes which I loved, but really had no place for. I kept thinking that "someday" I'd have a place for them. Well, while waiting for "someday", I wasn't living here, now - and they were taking up an awful lot of space. I must confess though, I did keep my Jadite pieces! I will FIND a place for them! I am very proud of all four of us. We got rid of years of accumulated junk and decided collectively that it was time to start fresh. I can't believe how much storage space we have now.

Andy and I have also been gearing up for this school year. We will be going to the next big book sale in September to round up the books we need for literature this year. We are studying British literature and need several classic books, all of which I'm sure I'll find at the book sale considerably less expensive than buying them new online. I love that book sale - yes, I got rid of a LOT of books in our massive cleanout. What I have left though are good ones and textbooks, some of which I have already listed and sold on eBay and have some still to list. So they won't be sitting around like they would have previously. But I can't help myself - I LOVE books! Homeschoolers can never have enough books.

Well, that's it for now. I can't promise when my next post will be, but I'll try to make it some time before the new year!