Beat the Clock? More like Stop the Clock Today.

What a day Thursday turned out to be.

I got to the PO to mail off an important document, paid some bills, cleaned some more clutter in the kitchen. Then I went to stash a minivan load of free t.p., paper towels and facial tissue in my storage unit. The Storage Unit I rent to hold my eBay treasures until they get sold, that is. It's half empty now, so plenty of room for all these lovely free paper products until the garage gets fully organized this summer & I have a proper place for my stockpile along side my home canned veggies & jams.

So I'm transferring all the paper products from car to unit and I stepped wrong with my left foot, half on/half off the concrete lip of the floor of the unit & half on the big gravel-y rocks in front of it and a bad 'snapping' noise eminated from said foot.

And a pain shot through the bottom of my foot and made me curse like a longshoreman.

And then I couldn't put weight on the foot.

Thankfully I don't have a manual transmission in my car, so I was able to drive home and stagger/hobble into the house, up the stairs! and into bed. When the kids got home, I called for some ice and my bottle of Darvocet.

So there was no T.P. Coupon redeeming today and Friday doesn't look promising either.
*sigh*

I could slap myself because this same exact thing happened a few months ago, the same injury and in the same exact spot...meaning same exact foot AND on the same exact location at the storage unit!

As Yoda would say, "A Dummy, she is!"

What's worse than not being able to redeem those freebies, is the fact that I missed my daughter's Induction into the National Honor Society tonight(well, last night technically). There was no way I would have been able to walk the distance & navigate the stairs from the parking lot to the auditorium where this shindig was being held. I talked to daughter and she wasn't very broken up about me not being there. She knows I would if I could.....

I was able to make it to the Induction Ceremony 2 weeks ago when she was accepted into the French National Honor Society so this absence isn't so bad.
The French National Honor Society is like the NHS but for High School students who study French and maintain an A average. They light candles and speak in French, then sign the register and get a certificate and a pin, amidst wildly clapping proud parents. Yes, there is nothing like giving a bunch of hormonal teens weapons(sharp pins), live flames(candles)& flammable starters(paper certificates)while they're reciting literature in a foreign tongue. At least they didn't revolt and take us parents in the audience hostage or attempt to storm any Bastilles or anything. ;-)

Here's a picture of daughter getting her certificate. It's too dark but every photo I take in that auditorium turns out that way because the lighting is so bad. She's the big dark blob in the center, next to the light blob, which is her French teacher.

Daughter's French Teacher once told us that daughter has a gift for language. Yes, she didn't get that aptitude from myself and certainly NOT from her father!lol

Daughter took the National French Exam last year and finished in the Top Ten in this region for her Level. Not bad for someone who wasn't raised in a bilingual home or exposed to a foreign language until Middle School. She just breezes through her French classes with minimal effort and gets A's. Daughter says it bores her and won't devote more than the rudimentary time to learning French. Neither her teacher or us, her parents, could talk her into taking the French Exam this year.

Daughter could develop mad skills with her aptitude if she just applied herself. If not French, then some other language. Even showing her that language skills might help pay her way through college(can you say scholorships?) or help her land an interesting job(can you say diplomatic corp?) doesn't seem to affect her attitude. She is too stubborn for her own good.

Gee, where does she get that from I wonder? ;-)

Sluggy-with the bum foot

Toilet Paper Beat the Clock

I was able to chisel down the stack of Marcal Small Steps Qs a bit today.

The K-Mart stops were Not very fruitful, but I did get a few Paper Towel Packs.

At the local chain grocer I was able to use up the Facial Tissue Qs. And I almost cleared the shelf of the regional chain grocer in Teeny Tiny Town tonight of single T.P. rolls.



Here is the updated photo of the stacks....

I'm down to....

15 $4 item Qs(good for paper towel 3packs or t.p. 4 packs)

42 $1 item Qs(good for single rolls or facial tissue boxes on sale for $1)

29 $1 off Qs(good on 2 ct. paper towels, 4 roll t.p. packs or more-13 good on napkins also)

Total-86 Qs left to use.

Time left to use them in-3 days.

I'm not worried about the $1/1 Qs but....Must-Spend-FREE-item-Qs.....Must-Spend-FREE-item-Qs.....Must-Spend-FREE-item-Qs.....

Tune in tomorrow for the latest report....

Sluggy

CAT JAM FEVER at Wags, got Paid 11 cents to Shop

I had some CAT JAM FEVER today at Walgreens!
No, it's NOT a new Ted Nugent song parody(but it probably could be!lol).
And it's NOT a new Food Network Celeb's Food Product(though it would make a great name for a new Bobby Flay inspired hot sauce).
But it IS totally descriptive of my outing to Wags today.
Read on.....

So I had my scenarios all written down to roll my RRs for the week today. Got to the store and surpise, surprise!.....they had ALL the RR generating items in stock.

I get through the 1st Transaction, and then as the Cat machine is spitting out my 5 RRs for my 2nd Transaction it J-A-M-S mid Cat!

ARGH!!!

Why.

Me??

The paper jammed and the machine starts beeping and blinking and making some gosh awful noise like a gerbil is stuck in the gears of the thing.

Good grief!

The cashier is opening the front, fixing the paper, closing the front, then opening the back and sticking her hand in there playing with some wires. I am having visions of her electrocuting herself over some catalinas and the paramedics rushing in to carry her off in an ambulance.

But she somehow RESET the thing.

It stopped beeping.

It stopped blinking.

And it stopped printing the rest of my Cats as it had reset and now had no memory of my Cats.

UGH.

So I got the 1st Cat and 1/4 of the 2nd one.

She calls the Manager.

The manager doesn't want to come up front because he just got a delivery in the back & is busy with that. He asks the cashier which Cats I need and she tries to tell him.

About 5 mins. later another employee comes up front with 3 papers & has the cashier give them to me. It's the dreaded forms to mail to the Cat company for your RRs that don't print. Of course, he should have brought FOUR forms, not three. I've got the Calcium D Cat, but need my Colgate $1.50RR, my Speed Stick $1RR, my Reach $3RR & my Tropicana $1RR. The forms he gave me where for the Edge Gel RR, the Colgate RR & a J&J RR(Reach is J&J but the RR amount is wrong). So I tell the cashier the forms are wrong or missing and she calls the Manager again.

Another 10 mins. go by and he finally shows up. I explain that I would have been more than happy to submit the forms(well, I lied...I HATE those forms!lol)but they were wrong or missing except for 1 AND 2 of them were NOT valid after today(had to be postmarked today 5/27!, even though the RR deals are active until Sat.)!)& there was no way I could get them in the mail today.

He looked at my receipt and gave the items I had bought the once over. Then he tried to tell me that my RRs didn't print because I used Coupons to buy them.

Oh, if I only had $1 for every time I've heard that lie!LOLOL

Don't these people understand that we all KNOW this is false by now?!?!

Geez.....they just keep trying this same old line on us, don't they?

So I came back at him, confidently, that I KNOW that isn't why they didn't print. The machine was in mid-print when it jammed, so it WAS trying to print RR #2 and would have printed the other 3 had it not jammed. My item count was 2 over my coupon count INCLUDING the RRs I used to pay. No RRs used in payment were from the same company as the items I purchased. I then pulled out a duplicate set of coupons like I had just used and said, "I can prove this snafu was NOT an error on my part by rebuying all the items on this receipt and using this identical set of coupons like I just used. I'll guarantee this other Cat machine at this register will print 5 RRs for $9,$3, $1.50 & 2x $1s. like it was trying to do over there before the machine jammed."

That seemed to satisfy him that I wasn't just some greenhorn couponer he could bluff. ;-)

Usually, like when the machine was broken 2 trips back, they just rering everything and print the RRs. Mr. "I'm too busy" just grabbed some already used RRs from the other register that equaled what they owed me and gave them to me.

As long as I got what was due me, that was fine.

Of course, I didn't look closely at the RRs he gave until I got home, so I didn't notice that 1 of them expires this Sat.

Ugh.

Usually you have 2 weeks to use them or lose them. I have 3 days to use this one. grrrrr

Then I went and bought the same items from Transaction #2 again and guess what??.....all 5 RRs printed! Amazing......lol

The last 3 Transactions went smoothly. The whole process should have taken 1/2 hr. or less but because of the Cat jam snafu, I was in the store twice as long as I should have been.

I won't do a Play-by-Play Breakdown as it's late.

On my last Transaction, the register wouldn't take my Cutter's Repellant Q for $2.....might have been because I bought a double pack of sprays that was on sale and not a single bottle. Instead of pressing the point, I told her to take that item off my bill and I'll not use that coupon.....I could live without some bug spray today. She had already imputed my RRs as payment, so the total was -$2.98, meaning I had paid $2.98 over what was due.

So she refunded that amount back onto my Gift Card, which was fine by me. The Gift Card $ doesn't expire in 2 weeks like a RR.lol



I just figured out my total OOP for these 6 Transactions and the first 5 came to $2.89. Then they owed ME $2.98, so I bought everything today and they paid me .11¢!



Grand Totals.....

Value of Items $164.48

Out of Pocket Negative $.11

Is 100.06% Savings possible??LOL

RRs Used $87RR

RRs Received $60.50RR



It should have been $61RRs as Mr. Manager gipped me out of .50RR. I can live with that though.

I did burn some RRs today. #1 son wanted some acne soap & they had some good stuff on sale, etc. I've got so many RRs I didn't mind burning through some, especially since next week I'll be getting free Ecotrin RRs with those $2 Qs I have.lol

So here is what I got.....

6 Colgate Toothpaste
9 Reach Toothbrushes
3 Reach Dental Floss
1 Listerine
5 Speed Stick Deo
3 Calcium D Supplements
2 Kraft Deluxe Mac & Cheez
2 Chicken Broth
1 Mayo
2 Tropicana O.J.(NOT PICTURED)
2 PanOxyl Acne Soap
1 Wags Freezer Bags clearanced

All this and they paid me .11¢

They should have paid me $50 for the aggravation.lol

Sluggy

The Lost Weekend a la Couponing

Have you ever seen that old movie, The Lost Weekend? It starred Ray Milland as a drunk who went off on an alcohol induced bender. He got the DTs & saw him some mighty big pink elephants in that film.

Well I feel like ol' Ray lately. I seem to have gone off the normal life tracks into one coupon induced shopping frenzy after another.

It all started earlier this month. Walgreens started it with that $5RR for those Glucose Meters. I had alot of coupons so I hunted those down for awhile. That gave me lots of $5RRs that I had to roll every 2 weeks or lose. (FYI-the Meters are in the process of being donated to a free medical clinic nearby.)

Then Rite-Aid had a fabulous month to do the Single Check Rebate, so I've been keeping a scorecard going of what I need to purchase each week to turn that MIR deal into a righteous Moneymaker!

Then there were the $10 Qs for Dr. Scholl's Inserts deal I 'stepped' into by accident(yes, I did just make a very lame pun), which gave me $10RR moneymakers that also now have to be rolled every 2 weeks into new RRs with the Bayer Meter RRs. I just finished planning out the 7 scenarios I need to complete tomorrow at Wags to roll the expiring RRs. That only took me an hour. 8-P

I have only dropped into CVS 4 times this month as I'm not an adept enough juggler to keep the Wags & CVS balls in the air simultaneously. The challenge of finding those Neutrogena sunscreen tubes Moneymakers was just too tempting NOT to visit today. BTW-I found some! ;-)

Then I found a long lost grocery love-Shop Rite-has a store that is plausibly close enough for my shopping pleasure. Another possibility for good shopping deals but at a distance.

Then Price Chopper baited us with a puny $7 Cat Deal. I was so starved for any Cat Deal here near Teeny Tiny Town that I swallowed it hook, line & sinker.
Last Wed. through Sat.(after I got my poor dented up car back)is just a haze of cooking, laundry, clipping/organizing 4x inserts from the 5/17 paper & running
back and forth to PC to roll the $7 Cats as many times as I could fit in. PS-I think I got in 23 Transactions before time ran out on the Deal. I won't know until I sit down and go through the pile of receipts!

Admist all this I've been methodically stockpiling paper products most of the month...those Marcal Small Steps items, that I blogged about HERE. With all those great FREE Small Steps Coupons I had plus the ones I traded for and then the ones I broke down and ordered on eBay because we didn't get the FREE $4.00 Valued Item ones, it was all a daze and this past weekend I finally pulled out all those SS Qs I had left and I think I may have a tad of a Couponing problem!

OK....I KNOW I have too many.

Way.
Too.
Many.

This isn't usually a problem but with a lack of focus on using these up, I find myself swimming in them and guess when they expire?

Go ahead, guess!

Did you say this Sunday, May 31st?

Of course you did.

And you are Correct!

So I spent Sunday night planning out my route with my other errands, so I can hit all the store that carry these items and hopefully use them all up before THIS Monday.

This is trickier than it sounds. Certain stores only carry the single t.p. rolls, while others carry the 3 pack Towels(for hubby, I don't do pts), and still others carry the 4 roll t.p. packages & some carry the single rolls and the facial tissues, etc. etc. etc.

I was successful today in using 30 single t.p. roll Qs, 7 facial tissue box Qs, 5 $1/1 Qs on napkins(I know, I know....I still use paper napkins sometimes and not cloth), 1 pack of p.t.s & 14 packs of 4 roll t.p. Monday I had to run out for some Memorial Day BBQ things and picked up 40 single roll t.p.s while I was at the store. I think if I show my face in that store again, the cashier who checked me out will have a nervous breakdown.

And I can't have THAT on my conscious.

Here's a pic of the Qs I have left....

Each of those paper clipped stacks is 20 Qs. There are 7 Free Facial Tissue Qs, 23 Free up to $4 Item Qs and I don't even know how many $1/1 Qs....maybe 40? I'm too tired(or would that be scared?) to count them.

I started out with about 250 Qs total, so I've still got some work to do this week. Tomorrow I hope to hit 2 K-Marts & 3 local chain grocers. If those don't prove fruitful then I'll hit the regional chain grocer in Teeny Tiny Town too. I should be able to pick up 20 rolls of tp there at least.

When this week is over, I don't think my family will need to buy t.p. until about Thanksgiving.

That would be Thanksgiving 2012!

Serious.

T.P.

Stockpile.

Anybody want to bet whether I'll get these Qs all used before I either lose my mind or the sands of time run out?

Sluggy-who can stop aaaaanytime....

Reynolds Aluminum Foil for the Grill MAIL IN REBATE

If you are in the Central to Eastern PA area, check out your local Weis/Mr.Z's grocery store. There are displays in the stores for the new Reynolds Wrap Foil for the Grill. It's wider and supposedly non-stick.

There is a tearpad on the displays for a Mail-In Rebate to get your full purchase price back(up to $4.69) when you buy this new Grilling Foil and 1 other Reynolds Wrap foil item(excludes 25 & 20 sq. ft. rolls). Both items have to be purchased in the same transaction and the offer is good on purchases made between 03/23/09-10/31/09. MIR must be postmarked by 11/30/09.

The Foil for the Grill item at Weis here is $4.19. Use 2 Reynold's Foil $1/1 Qs from the 5/17 insert and buy the Foil for the Grill & another Foil item(cheapest that is larger than 20/25 sq. ft.), submit for the MIR on the Grilling Foil and you get back $6.19 on the purchase, while spending OOP $4.19 & $?

$2.89 is what the recycled Foil is going for here. That's what I bought with my Grilling Foil because philosophically, I'd rather get the recycled stuff.

So my transaction for the Grilling & Recycled Foil was $5.08 OOP(after Qs & before tax) and I'll get back $4.19 of that in the MIR.

You could also just grab the MIR Form now from the display and wait until you find a good sale on the other Reynolds foil products to snag a lower priced item with your Foil for the Grill. Just get a form soon before they all disappear!

There is also a $1/1 Q for the Recycled Reynolds Foil from the 4/19 inserts you can pair with the 5/17 insert foil Q, if you have it and don't have 2 Foil Qs from the 5/17 insert.

Whatever Q you use, go get you some cheap & free foil!

Sluggy