Recent Happenings at Chez Sluggy

Let's see.....what's been happening here at Chez Sluggy......these are in no particular order.

*  I've been getting some really strange comments lately.  One was in German(and I don't understand a lick of German)and linked to an anonymous blogger profile.  Another was really bizarre and talked about how the Illuminati can guide you to being rich beyond your wildest dreams.
OoooooKkkkkkk!?
I always know which are oddball comments or shameless commercial links because they are always left on a very old post.  Ok, almost always left on a long ago blog post.  ;-)

*  Last week when I smoked those ribs and that chicken I also smoked some potatoes.  McVal posted a recipe for a smoked potato salad eons ago that I wanted to try and I finally got around to smoking the potatoes for it.

 They smelled really good when they came out of the smoker.

And you can even see a smoke ring on them!  I didn't have all the ingredients however to make the recipe for the dressing in the recipe she sent so I just made the dressing like I always do and it was even yummier than the way I usually make my potato salad.

I did notice though that smoked potato salad is much better when it's WARM.  Eaten cold from the fridge later as a leftover, the potato skins seem tough for some reason....maybe smoking made the skins tough?  The next time I make this I'll just make enough for one meal and not plan on having any leftovers.....or I'll try it with the recipe ingredients(if I plan ahead and make sure I have everything for it).


*  I've also gotten more "we love your blog and we want you to link to us or we want to post something on your blog that will make us money somehow/somewhere else" emails.  I got another one that opened with "Dear Linda".  Um, I'm not Linda.
Remember the one I got in May HERE?  They also called me Linda.  Is there a Linda out there somewhere impersonating me? lolz

*  The local Bakery where College Boy worked part time during his last year of high school and where he hoped to work again this past Summer ended up closing it's doors this June.  Good thing he got another job for the Summer, huh?
Well a couple of weeks ago I drove past and the Bakery is back!

WTF?!  Same name/sign.  I wonder what happened?


*  I graduated from Physical Therapy.  rah! 
7 appointments and they gave me the boot.  Well insurance actually gave me the boot if you know what I mean.   Since this wasn't really addressing the current issue with my foot(but rather exercising and strengthening my ankle which was good but not necessary)I could have stayed home and gotten as well just as fast. lolz

*  I picked collards from my garden for the first time earlier this week.

This lot came to about 1.5 lbs.  I cooked them up for dinner on Wednesday and Hubs said, "So is that all of them?"
HA! 
"Hardly",  I replied.  I've got 6 plants out there and this is just the beginning of what they are going to yield.  I wanted to wait until the first frost to harvest them but I may have to go ahead and pick them all this weekend and put them up for Winter.

Cooked Collards are so much better when you can find them fresh, whole in the store or grow your own rather than buying the bagged stuff they sell.  The bagged, washed and chopped collards are always full of the big thick stems.  The companies don't de-stem them so your whole collard experience is spoiled by that IMHO.

*  Hubs and I went to that annual Church Auction fundraiser last weekend.

Here are the actual "things" we won......

A vacuum cleaner
A car/truck organizer
A miniature electric skillet
A basket of jams and vinegars
A car cd player lock(this was thrown in with a gift certificate I wanted, it was not wanted but I had to take it, and it will be going into my next Salvation Army donation)
A large warty pumpkin and a massive watermelon which aren't pictured.

I also won this print.........

It's a print of boat house row in Philly on the Schuylkill River by Carl Whitney Bucks.  It's part of a series on Philly and is framed nicely.  This would go for at least a couple hundred bucks in an art store.  I paid $16(and got Domino's discount Qs as well with it).
Now I just have to figure out where to hang it........


And now for the gift certificates we won.............

This is the reason we go, for the gift certificates to local businesses.
We got everything from pizza, to restaurants, to oil changes, to auto parts stores, to haircuts, to grocery store GCs.
Included in these gift certificates are a few things I am using for Christmas presents so a win/win!
We paid $320(it was less but I always round the amount on the check I write up)and received $600+ worth of goods and services.

* I spent a half an hour on the phone with the billing department where I had my cataract surgeries because the last bill I received from them made NO sense whatsoever to me!
What a PITA!!!  I must have sounded like a total idiot to the billing clerk but I was NOT getting off that phone without understanding what was going on with my bill.  It looked like I was double charged for something(which I had already paid 2 months ago) and none of what they claimed I owed lined up with anything on my EOBs from the insurance company.
In the end I found out when they charged a co-pay upfront for the surgery center facility charges it was WAAAAY under what they should have charged, and that I will most probably be getting billed for another facility charge for the 1st surgery back in April(which was also way under charged in the upfront co-pay)and that charge the insurance keeps denying and they are still appealing.  Very strange.
Anyway it ended up today that I still owed them $427 or so(and will probably owe another $427 once the appeals are done).  If insurance won't pay that appealed charge I will end up owing $1300 so I sure hope it gets straightened out!!!
It's bad enough I owe almost $1K I didn't realize was going to be due but owing $1700+ would be worse.
bleh.
So I wrote a check for the $427, put it in an envelope and stamped it.  You'll LOVE the stamp I chose to use to mail this to the Eye Doctor........

*snort* Ya, I am that gal!


*  I received a rebate check in the mail last week.............

When I shop online(on the rare occasions I do shop online)I use the cash back portal ShopAtHome dotcom.  You can cash out at $20 minimum.  I got an email from them in July that they were sending me a check(even though I didn't ask to cash out).  I wanted to wait until after the Holidays this year to cash out since I probably would buy some stuff online but not get at least $20 back in savings so I would let what I had accumulate some more and cash out Jan. 1st. 
Now if I buy anything online I'll have more rebate $ to carry over into 2016 and will have to wait even longer to be able to cash that out. Ugh.

Yes, I've used ShopAtHome almost 2 years now and this is the FIRST $20+ in rebates I have accumulated.  I told ya I don't shop online much! lolz

*  I've been doing Genealogical RAOK(Random Acts of Kindness)for folks online who don't have access to the documentation on Ancestry dotcom.  I sent a woman photos of the death certificates for her great grandparents this past week.  She said she had been searching for this information for years!
I found it almost instantly with a few keystrokes.
Piece.
O'.
Cake.

*  A follow-up to the Plenti Points snafu of last week.  I talked about going back to do the $10 in Points Deal on Pink Eye and Ring Relief products HERE (toward the end of that post).  Well I went online with Rite-Aid the evening of the day I bought those products and they only gave me $2 total in points instead of $20.  The online CS person couldn't do anything but have the District Manager call me on the phone in the coming days and in his words, "make me a happy customer". lol

I gave him the phone number but said I just wanted my points and I didn't want to have to talk to yet another person to get satisfaction and I ended the chat session.  And then I went back the next day to Rite-Aid and returned the products, got a refund in the form of points back in my account AND a partial refund on the gift card(they also yanked the $2 in points I got for buying the products).  And I thought this Crapfest was over with.

But on Monday evening the phone rang and it was the manager of my Rite-Aid.  I didn't pick-up the phone(I never do!lol)and he left a message that he was calling about the problem I had had at Rite-Aid over the points not generating.  Yes, they yanked/changed the deal and it now gave $1 in points not $10 in points and there is nothing he can do to put more points on my account.  So he was giving me a $10 R-A gift card for my troubles(even though I really think it should be for $20 as that was the amount of points that was the issue!)and it will be in the office and to just let a manager on duty know to get it for me the next time I was in the store.
I was picking up rxs last night and also picked up an envelope with this in it....

 

So it goes to show that it pays to complain when things don't go the way they should and you may get something.

And just to be a real bitch about this, here are 2 photos I took in the eye care aisle at Rite-Aid last night on my way to the pharmacy counter..........

 The shelf tag for the Ring Relief is STILL THERE!

The shelf tag for the Pink Eye Relief has been removed.
Soooo, instead of changing the sign and making it the correct 100 points they just took the whole thing down.

And you will plainly see that it states you get 1000 Plenti points still when you buy this item!!!
The next time I go to the store I think I'll whip out a pen and change the sign to reflect the correct amount of points just so no one else gets tricked by Rite-Aid.

So what has been happening in your world lately?

Sluggy